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USA Today
3 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Two big cases underway over Trump's higher education policy. Here are the key takeaways
BOSTON ― A federal courthouse was the epicenter of the legal world on July 21 as federal judges heard arguments in two cases surrounding the Trump administration's efforts to revoke federal funding from Harvard University and to deport foreign-born student protesters for pro-Palestinian activism. In courtroom 18 at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse, U.S. District Judge William Young heard closing arguments in American Association of University Professors (AAUP) v. Rubio. The organization's chapters at several universities, as well as the Middle East Studies Association, sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March over what it described as an "ideological deportation policy" the administration was using to retaliate against noncitizens for pro-Palestinian speech. Steps away, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs heard oral arguments in Harvard's lawsuit against the administration over the more than $2.5 billion in federal funding it pulled from the school, citing its alleged inaction on antisemitism. The First Amendment lies at the heart of both cases, which could have significant implications for the future of higher education and free speech in the U.S. Here are key takeaways from the trials. Research, civil rights and lives are at stake, attorneys say Harvard's attorneys argued that the loss of federal funding would significantly damage the school's ability to conduct research that serves a public benefit while not meaningfully addressing antisemitism, NPR reported. The Trump administration, on the other hand, said Harvard's Jewish students are harmed by the school's alleged inaction on antisemitism, which it has said amounts to a violation of federal civil rights law. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, along with co-counsel Sher Tremonte law firm, sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration on behalf of the association's chapters at several universities, including Harvard, and the Middle East Studies Association in March. In AAUP v. Rubio, attorneys from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Sher Tremonte law firm argued that the Trump administration's 'ideological deportation policy' affected not only the activists who have been arrested thus far but created a chilling effect on the free speech of noncitizen students and faculty. The government's attorneys disputed the existence of such a policy. If it did exist, lawyer William Kanellis said, 'you'd see many more arrests.' Judges questioned some arguments Both judges were skeptical of some of the arguments attorneys attempted to make in their courtrooms. The notion that the government has the authority to slash Harvard's federal funding for any reason was a 'major stumbling block for me,' Burroughs said. She said there would be 'staggering' implications for constitutional law if the government had the power to make such decisions 'for reasons oriented around speech.' Burroughs also questioned how revoking Harvard's federal grants contributed to the government's stated objective of combatting antisemitism at the university, as the Harvard Crimson reported. Young, meanwhile, appeared skeptical of the AAUP's argument that the Trump administration created and implemented a new 'ideological deportation' policy. He also questioned the plaintiff's arguments surrounding Canary Mission, an organization that says it 'documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond.' The plaintiff's attorneys characterized it as an extremist group the government relied upon to identify noncitizens for investigation and arrest. Young was skeptical of the attorneys' characterization of the group and said it's 'perfectly appropriate for the government to take leads from any source.' First Amendment issues at the heart of both cases Alexandra Conlon, a representing the plaintiffs in the deportation case, said that by revoking visas and green cards based on noncitizens' pro-Palestinian activism, the federal government was 'systematically violating the First Amendment' and seeking to chill speech it disagrees with. On the first day of the trial, Justice Department attorney Victoria Santora said the First Amendment applies to both citizens and noncitizens alike. But she later backtracked to say 'there are nuances to the First Amendment,' Politico reported. Department of Justice attorney Ethan Kanter continued that argument July 21, saying noncitizens do not have First Amendment rights to the same extent as U.S. citizens. While they may have such rights in some capacity, he said, they are 'context dependent and in relation to the compelling government interest at play.' Lawyer Steven P. Lehotsky, representing Harvard in the funding lawsuit, said the administration's actions against the university reflect a 'blatant, unrepentant violation of the First Amendment,' the Harvard Crimson reported. Administration's moves are 'part of a broader attack' Ramya Krishnan, a Knight First Amendment Institute attorney representing the AAUP in the deportation case, said both that case and the one over Harvard's federal funding were part of the Trump administration's higher education "power grab." 'These are part of a broader attack on higher education in this country in weakening the independence of these institutions, in undermining them as a site for discourse and intellectual inquiry," she said, "and I think that people should be very worried about that.' The Trump administration has accused schools of engaging in "exploitative and unlawful practices" and said its steps to overhaul higher education would "rebuild public trust" in such institutions. Burroughs said she would issue an opinion in the Harvard case soon after oral arguments concluded on July 21, the Harvard Crimson reported. The school has requested a ruling by Sept. 3, which is its deadline for submitting paperwork to close out its federal grant funding. Young did not offer a timeline for issuing his opinion in the deportation case. BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@ USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Key takeaways from trial over Trump administration's ‘ideological deportation' policy
A trial over the extraordinary measures taken by the Trump administration to detain foreign scholars over their pro-Palestinian speech revealed previously unknown details about the extent to which immigration officials broke with precedent in their campaign against university activists. The case, which was brought by the national American Association of University Professors (AAUP); its Harvard, Rutgers and New York University chapters; and the Middle East Studies Association (Mesa) after the arrest of several noncitizen students and scholars who had been outspoken about Palestinian rights, marked the first time the administration was asked to defend its position that it has the authority to deport noncitizens over constitutionally protected speech. The plaintiffs argued the government's actions amounted to an illegal 'ideological deportation' policy. 'The Trump administration is imprisoning and expelling people because of their political viewpoints,' said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, which represented the plaintiffs along with the law firm Sher Tremonte. 'It would be difficult to conceive of a policy more offensive to the first amendment, or to the values the first amendment was meant to serve.' While the four arrested scholars – including the Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk – have all been released from detention while their legal cases proceed, others have left the country to avoid arrest and one is in hiding. The trial ended in Boston on Monday. The judge in the case, Reagan appointee William G Young, is not expected to rule on the case for at least a few weeks. Any decision he makes will almost certainly be appealed, possibly up to the US supreme court. These are some of the revelations that came out of the trial. Among the trial's most explosive revelations was the fact that the government relied on dossiers compiled by the rightwing Canary Mission, a secretive, pro-Israel group dedicated to doxing thousands of pro-Palestinian students, scholars and activists, as well as information by the far-right Zionist group Betar USA, which even the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League lists as an extremist organisation. Both Canary Mission and Betar had been involved in compiling 'deportation lists', sending 'thousands of names' to government officials. While that had been previously reported, the testimony of senior US immigration officials revealed for the first time the extent to which the government relied on such lists. Peter Hatch, a senior official within Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division, testified that the agency assembled a group of officials – known internally as the 'Tiger Team' – dedicated to investigating student protesters. The team rapidly compiled more than 100 reports based on a list of 5,000 individuals identified on the Canary Mission website. The dossiers the agency compiled on Öztürk, Khalil and others highlighted their pro-Palestinian speech, Hatch testified, included their Canary Mission pages, as well as, in Öztürk's case, an op-ed she wrote in a student paper. 'The direction was to look at the website,' Hatch said in court. 'That we should look at the individuals named in the Canary Mission website.' Four of the officers involved in Öztürk and Khalil's arrests, as well as in the arrests of Columbia graduate Mohsen Mahdawi and Georgetown postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri, said that orders to prioritize the scholars had come from high up within the Trump administration. They also admitted they had never taken part in such arrests before. A New England Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agent involved in Mahdawi's arrest, William Crogan, said that he had never seen a noncitizen removed from the US based on similar factual allegations and that his superiors had ordered him to prioritize the case. Patrick Cunningham, an Ice agent in Boston, said the same of Öztürk's case, while Darren McCormack, an agent in New York, said that the request to arrest Khalil was unusual and that he was told the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the White House were specifically interested in Khalil's case. Andre Watson, a senior HSI official, testified that early in the Trump administration, Ice and the state department coordinated on a new process to implement the president's executive orders targeting student protesters. During the trial, the government's attorneys sought to block the release of documents detailing its processes and reasons for revoking student visas and issuing determinations of removability for green card holders such as Khalil and Mahdawi. The records for only five of the targeted students were released in the end; many others were not. The government also succeeded in blocking the release of a state department report detailing the administration's policies on the matter. The government has claimed the authority to deport noncitizens who have committed no crimes but whose presence it deems poses a threat to US foreign policy and national security, and it has said that the students' presence in the US interfered with its stated efforts to combat antisemitism. The US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment but in court filings it called claims of an ideological deportation policy the product of plaintiffs' 'imagination'. But John Armstrong, the most senior official at the state department's bureau of consular affairs, admitted under questioning that statements critical of Israel or US foreign policy could qualify noncitizens for deportation. He also admitted that officials who were instructed to compile allegations about the individuals targeted received no guidance about what constitutes antisemitism even as they sometimes invoked 'antisemitic conduct' in their memos. The administration's lawyers have also equivocated on whether noncitizens have the same constitutional rights as US citizens, at one point saying they do, but later adding that there are 'nuances' related to national security, immigration and foreign policy matters. Both citizen and noncitizen scholars testified about the climate of fear created by the arrests. Megan Hyska, a Canadian philosophy professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, said in court that she decided not to publish an op-ed she had written about organising resistance to the Trump administration's policies out of fear of being targeted for arrest. Nadje Al-Ali, a German anthropologist and former director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Brown University, said she canceled plans to travel abroad and stopped pursuing research related to Palestine because of similar concerns. Veena Dubal, the AAUP's general counsel, testified that the government's fearmongering campaign has fundamentally altered the group's activities. She said that members who had previously been very active within the group stopped attending meetings. Aslı Bâli, Mesa's president, warned in a statement to the Guardian that the impact of the government's policies risked only growing worse. 'The government is abducting individuals, and thereby separating families and squandering public resources, purely on the basis of protected political speech that they disagree with,' she said. 'They need to be held to account, and our rights need to be defended, because otherwise we will find these protections gone – and the chilling effect will be pervasive.'
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Memo on protesters cautioned that authority used to strip visas would face scrutiny
Action memos on pro-Palestinian protesters sent by government officials to Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the authority he used to strip their visas had never before been used and would likely face scrutiny, a government official testified in court Friday. Rubio used what the government says is his authority to find someone deportable "if the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that the alien's presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States," citing the Immigration and Nationality Act. A section of a government memo that was read in court noted "it is likely that courts will closely scrutinize this determination" because the basis of it could be considered "protected speech." MORE: DHS investigated over 5,000 student protesters listed on doxxing website: Official The contents of the memo were revealed during an ongoing bench trial in which the Trump administration is accused of instituting a constitutionally illegal ideological deportation policy against pro-Palestinian protesters, including Columbia University's Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts University's Rumeysa Ozturk. The lawsuit was filed by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, which represents hundreds of professors and students across the country. An action memo sent by government officials to the secretary of state proposing Rubio strip Khalil and Yunseo Chung of their visas was cleared by 10 people and departments within 24 hours before it was sent to Rubio, John Armstrong, the senior bureau official in the bureau of consular affairs at the State Department, testified Friday. The White House, Department of Homeland Security, State Department and Department of Defense had over 20 conversations about student protester visa revocations, most of which took place in March, Armstrong testified. Armstrong also testified that he had conversations with people on the Homeland Security Council over the visa revocations, naming Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller and his deputy. In a two-page memo from earlier this year outlining why Khalil should be deported, Rubio cited Khalil's alleged role in "antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States." Asked about how officials identify what constitutes antisemitism, Armstrong testified Friday that he can't remember receiving "any concrete guidance" as to what can be treated as antisemitic, and also testified that he doesn't know of any of his deputies having received formalized training on what antisemitism is. It's my understanding that "antisemites will try to hide their views and say they are not against Jews, they are just against Israel" -- but "it's a dodge" to hide their antisemitism, Armstrong said. Support for a foreign terrorist organization or terrorist activity is grounds for a visa revocation, Armstrong testified, saying, "Support for Hamas will get your visa revoked." Asked by plaintiffs attorneys, Armstrong also testified that criticizing Zionism, criticizing Israel's actions in Gaza, saying that the actions of the Israeli government are "worse than Hitler," saying "from the river to the sea," calling Israel an apartheid state and calling for an arms embargo could all be considered cause for removal under the executive order combatting antisemitism. MORE: Mahmoud Khalil case: Ordered to show evidence, government asserts Rubio's authority Armstrong, who personally authorized the decision to strip Ozturk of her visa, testified that he based the decision on her actions protesting Tufts' relationship with Israel and her "activities and association" with groups that are "creating a hostile environment for Jewish students." That alleged association was based on an op-ed she co-authored with someone who is part of a student group that supported the call for Tufts to divest and cut ties with Israel -- a proposal that was made by Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, a group which is now banned from campus. DHS and Homeland Security Investigations found that Ozturk was not part of the activities that resulted in Tufts SJP's ban from Tufts, according to documents read aloud in court by attorneys. Nonetheless, Armstrong maintained that Ozturk had ties to Tufts SJP. Ozturk's visa was revoked under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the government to revoke a visa for any reason, Armstrong testified. On Thursday, Andre Watson, the assistant director for the national security division at Homeland Security, testified that he has made 10 to 15 referrals of student protesters to the Department of State for possible visa revocation since the establishment of the Tiger Team task force looking into student protesters. He said he referred every individual on whom the Homeland Security Investigations task force has filed a report, including Khalil, Ozturk and Mahdawi. After the conclusion of testimony on Thursday, U.S. District Judge William Young informed the parties of definitions he will be relying on while making a decision after the conclusion of the bench trial. "Criticisms of the state of Israel are not antisemitism. They are political speech, protected speech," Young said. Commentary on "conduct of the state of Israel, if it involves war crimes, involves genocide ... is protected speech with respect to our constitution," Young said. While condemning antisemitism and saying the government should discourage antisemitism and hate against any group of people, he said, "Antisemitism ... is not illegal. It is protected under the First Amendment." MORE: Trial challenging administration's deportation of pro-Palestinian scholars gets underway On the pivotal question of whether visa holders and lawful permanent residents have the same First Amendment rights as U.S. citizens, the judge said, "Probably they do." Young also said criticizing the state of Israel "does not constitute pro-Hamas support." After new evidence is entered on Monday, closing arguments will begin in the trial.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump admin waffles in court on whether pro-Palestinian foreigners have full First Amendment rights
A trial on a First Amendment lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's drive to deport pro-Palestinian academics quickly confronted a thorny legal issue Monday: whether foreigners in the U.S. enjoy the same free speech rights as American citizens. The administration's stance on that critical question proved murky. Under questioning by U.S. District Judge William Young in his Boston courtroom, Justice Department attorney Victoria Santora initially said non-citizens have the same First Amendment rights as citizens. 'People in the United States share the same rights under the First Amendment,' Santora said. 'That's an answer and I'll hold you to that,' Young responded. However, about 10 minutes later, as Santora concluded her opening statement, she said she may have misspoken and needed to qualify her answer. 'The answer, I think, is not necessarily, based on their status in the country,' Santora said. 'There are nuances to the First Amendment,' Santora said, pointing to concerns about 'national security, foreign policy, immigration enforcement and enforcement discretion.' The exchange came as Young opened what's expected to be a two-week, non-jury trial on a lawsuit filed in March by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. The case comes as the Trump administration has intensified its crackdown on pro-Palestinian academics under a rarely used provision of immigration law that allows Secretary of State Marco Rubio to seek the deportation of students on foreign policy grounds. It's the first major trial over President Donald Trump's policies since he returned to office in January. The academic groups claim that the Trump administration is chilling the speech of foreign students and faculty members on U.S. college campuses by detaining pro-Palestinian activists and attempting to deport them. Judges in recent weeks have blocked the administration's efforts in several high-profile cases, including the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia student who organized pro-Palestinian campus protests and who was detained for more than three months before a federal judge ordered his release. The lawsuit also alleges that the administration's targeted enforcement of immigration laws is impairing the right of American students and faculty to hear the views of their non-citizen colleagues. During opening statements in the case, a lawyer for the academic organizations, Ramya Krishnan, told Young that Trump's policy was muffling the intellectual climate on many campuses. 'Not since the McCarthy era have immigrants been the focus of such intense repression for lawful political speech,' said Krishnan, an attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. 'The policy creates a cloud of fear over university communities and it is at war with the First Amendment.' However, Santora insisted that the high-profile efforts to deport scholars at Columbia, Tufts, Georgetown and elsewhere were the result of those individuals' 'activities' and not their speech. 'There is no ideological deportation policy or anything like it under any other name,' Santora said. 'There is no policy to revoke visas or remove non-citizens on the basis of protected speech or on any other unlawful basis … There is no immigration enforcement strategy based on protected speech.' In her opening, Santora mentioned the immigration enforcement efforts at issue as being responses to antisemitism on college campuses as well as a series of terrorist attacks foreigners committed in the U.S. in recent decades, including the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on those buildings and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon finish line. In questions and interjections during the openings, Young sounded skeptical about the government's suggestion that speech about issues of national security or immigration enforcement might be adequate grounds to deport foreigners otherwise legally in the U.S. 'The president ran on a policy of immigration enforcement, which he's attempting to carry out and whether individuals support that or oppose that, that all that seems to me political speech,' the judge said. Young did acknowledge the federal law Rubio has invoked in the cases of several students, which allows for the deportation of individuals whose presence in the U.S. is deemed to undermine U.S. foreign policy. 'There is this statute that has been on the books for some time. Congress has empowered the secretary personally to revoke visas if, in the secretary's determination, that the presence of the individual embarrasses the foreign policy of the United States,' the judge said. 'That's lawful, isn't it?' 'Whatever Congress intended as to [the law's] scope, the First Amendment prohibits the government from deporting non-citizen students and faculty based on their political viewpoint,' Krishnan said. Krishnan said there might be 'narrow applications' of that law that would be constitutional, like using it to expel a foreign official based in the U.S. However, she noted that some of the deportation attempts at issue in the lawsuit, including that of Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk, did not rely on the foreign policy-related statute. Still, Young signaled that figuring out how the First Amendment limits the government's ability to deploy that statute is a central issue in the trial. 'How do I harmonize the two?' the judge asked. 'How those two mesh is a real problem in this case.' The first two witnesses to testify in the case were both academics: Megan Hyska, a philosophy professor at Northwestern University, and Nadje Al-Ali, a professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Brown University. Both said they were supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (or BDS) movement, which is aimed at putting pressure on Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. Hyska and Al-Ali said they'd reined in some of their activities in the wake of the high-profile arrests of non-U.S.-citizen academics who'd been vocal supporters of Palestinian rights, such as Khalil and Ozturk. Hyska, who is Canadian, said she wore a mask to a protest rally to obscure her identity and did not release an op-ed she'd written critical of the Trump administration because she feared she could be expelled from the U.S. 'It struck me that I, too, could be potentially detained and deported on the basis of publishing something like this,' Hyska said. However, she conceded she'd continued to sign letters supporting academic colleagues who'd engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Al-Ali, who was born in Germany and has permanent residence in the U.S., said she abandoned both a cycling trip to Sicily and a research trip to Lebanon and Iraq because she feared that her leadership role at Brown's Center for Middle East Studies would attract the attention of immigration officials when she tried to return to the U.S. She also said she cleaned up her social media feeds before returning from a trip abroad. 'My Instagram page was all dogs, cats and recipes. Everything else was deleted,' Al-Ali said.
07-07-2025
- Politics
Trial challenging administration's deportation of pro-Palestinian scholars gets underway
The first day of an expected two-week bench trial challenging the Trump administration's efforts to deport international students and scholars who express pro-Palestinian views began Monday in Boston with the question of noncitizens' First Amendment rights. The lawsuit was filed by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, which represents hundreds of professors and students across the country. While recent efforts to deport high-profile international students like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk have been found unconstitutional and temporarily thwarted in federal courts, the Trump administration has continued removal proceedings against them. This case names Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a defendant and challenges his invocation of several provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, including a rarely invoked provision used to deport immigrants whose presence in the U.S. is deemed a threat to foreign policy interests. Ramya Krishnan, an attorney representing the academic groups, argued that the government has "adopted a policy of ideological deportation" and is chilling the speech of students and professors alike. As evidence, Krishnan said they will call on professors and academics who say they feel at risk of deportation over their pro-Palestinian teachings or views. During the opening statement, Krishnan also pointed at several social media posts by Trump officials, including Rubio's X post commenting on Khalil's arrest that said, "We will be revoking the visas and green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported." "In a litany of statements ... officials have referenced and reaffirmed the policy," she said. "They have also made clear that they deem a broad spectrum of pro-Palestinian and anti-war speech to be pro-Hamas and antisemitic." U.S. District Judge William Young interrupted Krishnan's statements on several occasions to question if she believed he had the right to challenge Rubio's wide-ranging discretion to invoke the provisions of the law. "Are you asking me to declare that the conduct of these public officials, including the Secretary of State, is unconstitutional?" the judge asked. "That is correct," Krishnan responded. "Well, then I've got this problem. If that's what you're asking, your people, your litigants, your clients, haven't challenged it, have they?" he pressed. "So to be clear, your honor, we do not challenge the constitutionality of the foreign policy provision directly. What we challenge is a policy of relying on a variety of INA provisions in order to deport noncitizen students and faculty based on their political viewpoint," she said. DOJ attorney Victoria Santora pushed back on accusations that the administration is targeting students for constitutionally protected speech. "The government's evidence will show that these legal authorities have existed for decades and that their purpose is to promote safety and security," Santora said. "The reality is that is the prerogative of each administration to set immigration enforcement priorities." But before she could deliver the government's opening statement, Judge Young asked if the public officials she is representing believe that noncitizens who are lawfully in the country have the same rights under the First Amendment as citizens. When she wavered on her answer, Judge Young pressed again. "Our position would be that the First Amendment does refer to persons and that people in the United States share the same rights under the First Amendment," Santora said. "Thank you, that's an answer and I'll hold you to that and please go ahead," Judge Young responded. However, a few minutes later Santora backtracked -- adding that there were "nuances to the First Amendment." "The nuance is that, as I addressed in our opening statement, this context involves issues of national security, foreign policy, immigration enforcement and enforcement discretion," she said. Attorneys for the plaintiffs proceeded to call to the stand several noncitizen professors who have expressed fear of being retaliated against for their previous speech or teachings. Government officials are expected to be among other witnesses called in the next few days.
