BOSTON — In a sweeping opinion issued Tuesday, a federal judge condemned the Trump administration for what he called an orchestrated effort to silence non-citizen students and faculty who joined protests critical of Israel.
The Reagan-appointed U.S. District Judge William G. Young ruled that senior officials in the Departments of Homeland Security and State “deliberately and with purposeful aforethought” used immigration powers to intimidate and punish lawful residents and visa holders for their political views.
“No law means no law,” Young wrote citing the First Ammendent and rejecting the administration’s claim that free speech protections applied only to citizens.
The 161-page decision found that Secretaries Kristi Noem and Marco Rubio implemented President Donald Trump’s executive orders in a “viewpoint-discriminatory way to chill protected speech.” The judge said their actions “violated the First Amendment” and amounted to an abuse of authority.
The ruling comes after a nine-day bench trial in which associations representing faculty and Middle East studies scholars argued that the government had sought to deport or revoke visas of foreign-born students engaged in pro-Palestinian protests. Young said the record showed “clear and convincing evidence” that federal officials coordinated a campaign of threats and enforcement actions.
The court compared the approach to past eras of political repression. “Nothing in the text, history, or tradition of the First Amendment suggests that persons lawfully present here may be subject to adverse action based on their political speech,” Young wrote. He called the administration’s interpretation “a new invention that in important ways goes beyond its closest analogues in the Red Scare.”
While the decision leaves open what remedies will follow, its tone was strikingly sharp. “The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction,” Young said in one passage. “It is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence.”
The lawsuit was brought by the American Association of University Professors, its Harvard and NYU chapters, the Rutgers AAUP-AFT, and the Middle East Studies Association. They alleged that federal agencies were compiling lists of student protesters and using obscure immigration statutes to threaten deportation.
The government argued that national security justified the measures, citing pro-Hamas activity on campuses. But Judge Young dismissed that rationale as both unconstitutional and arbitrary, noting that the policy reversed long-standing DHS guidance prohibiting immigration enforcement based on First Amendment activity.
The ruling represents one of the most forceful judicial checks yet on President Trump’s second-term immigration agenda. What remains now, Young wrote, is “to consider what, if anything, may be done to remedy these constitutional violations.”
