Judge Rules Trump Unconstitutionally Targeted Foreign Anti-Israel Students
“found that the administration systematically violated the First Amendment rights of foreign students”
The Trump administration will appeal this and probably win. Marco Rubio has been very clear on this issue.
The College Fix reports:
Federal judge rules Trump unconstitutionally targeted foreign pro-Palestinian students
A U.S. District Court judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration’s policy of targeting foreign students and faculty for deportation based on their pro-Palestinian advocacy is unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs, a coalition of academic and civil rights groups, hailed the decision as a crucial defense of constitutional principles.
But White House spokesperson Liz Huston described the ruling as “outrageous” and said an appeal is coming, asserting the ruling hampers national security, Reuters reported.
“Studying in the United States is a privilege that the Trump administration will not allow to foreign nationals who endanger America’s national security or imperil campus safety,” Huston said.
In his 161-page decision, Judge William Young found that the administration systematically violated the First Amendment rights of foreign students and engaged in a concerted effort to “chill” free speech on campuses.
Young ruled that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio implemented Trump’s executive orders “in a viewpoint-discriminatory manner to suppress protected speech, violating the First Amendment.”
“…The Public Officials’ threats to continue detaining, deporting, and revoking visas based on political speech provide circumstantial evidence of viewpoint-discriminatory enforcement that has objectively chilled Plaintiffs’ speech.”
Young also criticized the administration’s tactics, such as the use of masked agents for arrests. He also described the case as “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court.”
The New York Times reported that “the Trump administration’s strategy of scapegoating a few prominent leaders of pro-Palestinian demonstrations was a calculated move, designed to force like-minded academics from abroad into self-censorship.”
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Robed activists.
people and groups are always targeted for their behaviors…good or bad
and if you are a guest
then you are (more) limited in what you can do in your guests house
as the saying goes
how are guests like fish?
after about 3 days they start to smell
I’m so tired of these clowns. Foreign students are guests. What rights do they have to disrupt the life and liberty of Americans? If they were just babbling, then fine. What they are doing is more than that. Much more. Many of them also lied about their terrorist affiliations. What is wrong with these clowns?
They are just babbling. These plaintiffs did not commit any crime. They are not accused of any violence. The administration is simply asserting a right to cancel people’s visas because they say the wrong thing. The first amendment says it can’t do that.
Rubio has indeed been clear — and wrong. He’s said openly that he thinks that since the USA can deny people visas because of their speech, therefore it can also cancel visas already issued on the same grounds. But that is wrong. It’s clearly established law that once a person is in the USA they are fully protected by the constitution, and cannot be punished in any way for their speech. Including by canceling a visa.
When I was working in Latin America, I did not take sides in local politics. As I was not a citizen of the counties where I worked, I had no business getting involved in local politics. Had I gotten involved in local politics, many would have seen me as an “imperialist Yanqui” imposing my views on others.
As I saw it, a foreign resident—someone who is not a citizen of the country— is obligated to remain neutral in local politics. So I was neutral.
Many wanted to discuss local politics with me, so I listened. But no demonstrations, etc. It wasn’t my country.
I would expect similar behavior from foreign students in the United States. It’s not your country.
Judge rules 1st Amendment protects terrorist sympathisers!
It does. No one disputes that.
It’s easy for the lower court judges to do this. They know they’re going to be reversed, but they can signal their saintly virtues by handing down bogus verdicts.
Virtue signaling judges don’t really care about being ultimately reversed. So this situation will just have to deteriorate until the Senate loses enough of the Hamas sympathizers to allow impeachment of one of these activists. That should stop most of this nonsense.
Young is not a virtue signaler. He’s a serious judge, and he’s probably right on this one.
He’s also on senior status, so he’s not vulnerable to a lot of the pressures that an active judge might be subject to. He doesn’t have to give a damn what anyone thinks of him.
Young? Isn’t he that idiot that the SCOTUS had to remind that IT is the highest court in the land and he was not free to disregard their rulings? I believe Gorsuch was not happy with him and Young had to apologize, albeit feebly…