Trump Admin Violated Protesters' Constitutional Rights
Judge Rules Trump Administration Violated Protesters’ Constitutional Rights
A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio violated the constitutional rights of international students and professors by moving to deport them for attending pro-Palestine protests.
According to ABC News, the lawsuit was filed by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association in March. A bench trial was held in July, where it was found that the government used the doxxing website Canary Mission to investigate over 5,000 people who may have attended pro-Palestine protests in an effort to revoke their visas.
“This Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with the subordinate officials and, agents of each of them, deliberately and with purposeful aforethought, did so concert their actions and those of their two departments intentionally to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble of the non-citizen plaintiff members of the plaintiff associations,” U.S. District Court Judge William Young wrote in his decision.
“It was never the Secretaries’ immediate intention to deport all pro-Palestinian non-citizens for that obvious First Amendment violation, that could have raised a major outcry,” Young wrote in the order. “Rather, the intent of the Secretaries was more invidious — to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act (in ways it had never been used before) to have them publicly deported with the goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated non-citizen (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome.”
The lawsuit came as the Trump administration tried to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a green card-holding U.S. citizen, for helping organize pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University. A judge eventually granted Khalil a habeas corpus petition, preventing his deportation and incarceration, because protesting and being pro-Palestine isn’t actually illegal.
Judge Young also found that President Donald Trump’s support for these efforts is a clear violation of his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Still, thanks to the Supreme Court, he’s completely immune from facing any legal consequences. Despite the ruling, Judge Young said he was doubtful the White House would make a correction or even address its wrongdoing. “The President in recent months has strikingly unapologetically increased his attack on First Amendment values, balked here and there by District Court orders,” Young said.
While “free speech” was a major talking point by the Trump campaign during the 2024 election, President Trump has consistently shown a willingness to violate the First Amendment rights of anyone who disagrees with him. The “you can’t say anything these days” crowd has been noticeably silent as the Trump administration and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr have strong-armed companies into abandoning their DEI commitments and threatened investigations into companies they believe aren’t operating in “the public interest.”
This crackdown on free speech has seen several Black journalists fired from newsrooms. Former Washington Post writer Karen Attiah was fired for literally using Charlie Kirk’s own words in a series of Bluesky posts. Whether it’s through threats of deportation or job loss, the Trump administration clearly doesn’t value its duty to the First Amendment and Constitution.
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