Groups representing US university professors seeking to protect international students and faculty who engage in pro-Palestine advocacy from being deported did what no other litigants challenging the Trump administration's hardline immigration agenda have done so far: Take it to trial.
The two-week non-jury trial that kicked off in Boston on Monday in the professors' case marks a rarity in the hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed nationally challenging Republican President Donald Trump's efforts to carry out mass deportations, slash spending and reshape the federal government.
In many of those cases, judges have issued quick rulings early on in the proceedings without any witnesses being called to testify.
But US District Judge William Young, an 84-year-old appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, in keeping with his long-standing practice instead ordered a trial in the professors' case, saying it was the "best way to get at truth."
The trial stems from a lawsuit filed in March by the American Association of University Professors and its chapters at Harvard, Rutgers and New York University, and the Middle East Studies Association, in which they argued the administration was chilling free speech on campuses in violation of the US.
Constitution's First Amendment
Ramya Krishnan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said during her opening statement the State Department and Department of Homeland Security were doing so after adopting a policy of revoking visas for non-citizen students and faculty who engaged in pro-Palestine advocacy and arresting, detaining and deporting them as well.
"The policy creates a cloud of fear for university communities, and it is at war with the First Amendment," said Krishnan, a lawyer at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
She said the policy was adopted after Trump signed two executive orders in January directing the agencies to protect Americans from non-citizens who "espouse hateful ideology" and to combat anti-Semitism following protests that roiled college campuses after Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023.
Krishnan pointed to several high-profile arrests since those orders were signed, starting in March, when immigration authorities detained recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, the first target of Trump's effort to deport non-citizen students with pro-Palestine or anti-Israel views.
Since then, she said, the administration has cancelled the visas of potentially hundreds of other students and scholars and arrested several of them, including Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was taken into custody by masked and plainclothes agents after co-writing an opinion piece criticising her school's response to Israel's genocide in Gaza.
In their cases and others, judges have ordered the release of students detained by immigration authorities after they argued the administration retaliated against them for their pro-Palestinian advocacy in violation of the free speech guarantees of the US Constitution's First Amendment.
"The government sought to deport these non-citizens in retaliation for their speech," Krishnan said.
Free speech case
Trump administration officials have frequently spoken about the efforts to target student protesters for visa revocations.
Justice Department attorney Victoria Santora said "the reality is there is no ideological deportation policy, or anything like it, under any other name."
She said instead, the Trump administration was lawfully executing its wide discretion to enforce immigration law and revoke visas in order to pursue the justifiable purpose of ensuring national security and protecting Jewish students.
"The plaintiffs are challenging nothing more than this administration's lawful enforcement of immigration laws," Santora said.
The trial will determine whether the administration has violated the plaintiffs' First Amendment free speech rights. If Young concludes it has, he will determine a remedy in a second phase of the case.
Young has described the lawsuit as "an important free speech case."
When under questioning about her position, Santora said there were "nuances to the First Amendment," the judge sharply questioned what that means in this case.
"Political speech is at the very core of the First Amendment," he said.
