Judge rips ICE targeting of pro-Palestinian protesters as unconstitutional

(CN) — A federal judge on Tuesday lambasted top Trump administration officials for illegally trying to deport pro-Palestinian students “to strike fear” into protesters and chill free speech.

In a scathing 161-page ruling, U.S. District Judge William Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee in Boston’s federal court, delivered perhaps the sharpest legal rebuke of Donald Trump’s immigration policy to date.

He slammed Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem for conspiring to “intentionally chill the rights to freedom of speech” of the students. He likened mask-wearing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to “cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan.” And he accused Trump of stoking political polarization to keep Americans from fighting back.

“I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected,” Young wrote. “Is he correct?”

Young found that Rubio and Noem — defendants in this case, alongside the president — unlawfully used their departments to scare noncitizens from expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment on college campuses by arresting them for deportation proceedings.

The practice is purportedly part of a broader Trump administration goal to quell antisemitism on college campuses, which in practice has resulted in several schools and students being threatened or punished for on-campus demonstrations opposing Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Young’s ruling came after a two-week bench trial this summer over federal immigration authorities’ targeting of students like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk. Throughout the proceedings, Young stoked doubt over the government’s rationale for pursuing these students’ removal, as well as the tactics employed by immigration officers.

Commenting on ICE officers shielding their faces with masks during arrests, Young said at trial: “It would seem that the common sense inference is that that is to spread fear.”

He went one step further in his Tuesday ruling, writing that “ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence.”

“Small wonder ICE often seems to need our respected military to guard them as they go about implementing our immigration laws,” he wrote. “It should be noted that our troops do not ordinarily wear masks. Can you imagine a masked marine?”

Throughout the lengthy order, Young, who has grappled with several other cases against the government this year, voiced general concerns about federal agencies being used to silence critics.

“Perhaps we’re now afraid to stick our necks out,” he wrote. “If the distinguished Homeland Security intelligence agency can be weaponized to squelch the free speech rights of a small, hapless group of non-citizens in our midst, so too can the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, and the audit divisions of the IRS and the Social Security Administration be unconstitutionally weaponized against the President’s ever growing list of ‘enemies’ or opponents he ‘hates’ notwithstanding that political persecution is anathema to our constitution and everything for which America stands.”

Young also called this case “perhaps the most important” one to ever come across his desk, as it grapples with the question of whether noncitizens possess the same free speech rights as citizens do.

“The court answers this constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do,’” he wrote.

It remains unclear what remedy, if any, Young will order to uphold his ruling. He noted that this will be a difficult task, given Trump’s unprecedented expansion of the executive and history of “simply ignor[ing]” laws and norms. Still, Young said he’d schedule a remedy hearing promptly.

“The United States is under no obligation to allow foreign aliens to come to our country, commit acts of anti-American, pro-terrorist, and antisemitic hate, or incite violence,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement about the ruling. “We will continue to revoke the visas of those who put the safety of our citizens at risk."

Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Courthouse News that, with his order, Young “decide[d] to stoke the embers of hatred.”

“Less than a week after a terrorist attack targeting our Dallas ICE facility, a craven Judge is smearing and demonizing ICE law enforcement, likening them to terrorists,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

Higher education groups filed the underlying lawsuit in March, arguing that ICE detaining students for their Palestinian advocacy has “created a climate of repression and fear on university campuses” around the country.

Brown University international studies professor Nadje Al-Ali testified in July that the arrests of Khalil and Ozturk caused her to rethink planned research trips to Lebanon and Iraq, calling the trips “too risky” due to the actions of the Trump administration. Al-Ali likened the actions to stories her Iraqi family used to tell her about repression in their home country.

“I know about dictatorship and repression, and my relatives in Iraq lived with that fear of being picked up from the street,” she testified. “It really reminded me of that.”

Khalil, Ozturk and other students were arrested by federal immigration officers earlier this year after Secretary of State Marco Rubio deemed them threats to the nation’s foreign policy. Khalil helped lead widely publicized student protests at Columbia University against Israel’s bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip, while Ozturk co-authored an op-ed on the topic for Tufts University’s student newspaper.

Courts have since rejected Khalil’s and Ozturk’s detentions on that ground and ordered them to be released.

Other professors testified at the trial that the students’ arrests chilled their own First Amendment rights.

“I was fearful of deportation on the basis of high-profile public speech that expressed dissent with the Trump administration or its policies,” Northwestern University philosophy professor Megan Hyska said in July.

Testimony like this backed up the education groups’ claims that the Trump administration “is terrorizing students and faculty for their exercise of First Amendment rights.”

Young has overseen other cases against the Trump administration. The judge previously ruled against the government’s broad cuts to National Institutes of Health funding, finding that the administration engaged in “palpable” discrimination in its targeting of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

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