A federal judge said Thursday he intends to issue an order restricting the Trump administration from taking retaliatory immigration actions against academics who challenged government policies on pro-Palestinian activism on U.S. college campuses.
U.S. District Judge William Young made the announcement during a hearing in Boston, following his September ruling that the Departments of State and Homeland Security violated the First Amendment by discouraging speech among non-citizen academics.
“The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries, and ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment,” Young said.
Young, a Reagan appointee, said his order would apply to members of academic organizations that brought the lawsuit, including the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association.
The judge declined to issue a nationwide injunction, calling the plaintiffs’ request “overbroad,” but said a remedy was necessary based on what he found to be a conspiracy among senior officials to suppress speech.
“We cast around the word ‘authoritarian,’” Young said. “I don’t, in this context, treat that in a pejorative sense, and I use it carefully, but it’s fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone, everyone in Article II is going to toe the line absolutely.”
Instead of a blanket ban, Young said he would implement a presumption that any immigration action taken against members of the groups involved in the case was retaliatory. The government would need to prove in court that deportation efforts were lawful and unrelated.
