In a thunderous rebuke from the bench, a federal judge in Boston has ruled that Donald Trump’s administration trampled the U.S. Constitution when it targeted foreign students and scholars for deportation over their pro-Palestinian views.
The 161-page ruling declared that federal officials weaponized their powers to silence political speech on campuses, striking at the very heart of the First Amendment.
Judge William Young, who has served for decades on the federal bench, accused officials from the State Department and Homeland Security of acting “in concert” to purge students and faculty based not on security concerns, but on what they dared to say. Their words, not their actions, became the trigger for cancelled visas, masked arrests, and deportation threats.
One such arrest drew the judge’s ire: Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student, was taken into custody after co-writing an op-ed critical of her school’s stance on Gaza. Immigration officers in masks carried out the raid—an image that Judge Young likened to America’s darkest histories, invoking “cowardly desperados” and even the Ku Klux Klan.
“This was an ideological deportation policy,” Young wrote, accusing the administration of intentionally stoking fear to suppress lawful advocacy. He warned that the case may be the most consequential of his career, calling it a test of whether America still stands for the freedoms etched into its founding documents.
The lawsuit, led by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, challenged Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices. Their victory was hailed as a landmark moment: proof, they argued, that even noncitizens are shielded by the First Amendment when they speak on American soil.
The administration, however, was unrepentant. A White House spokesperson vowed to appeal, calling the ruling “outrageous” and insisting that foreign nationals with views deemed dangerous to national security should not be allowed to remain.
This legal showdown has roots in Trump’s executive orders, issued after campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, directing federal agencies to “vigorously” combat anti-Semitism. In practice, the orders gave rise to arrests like that of Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, the first high-profile target, and a sweeping cancellation of visas across universities.
Though judges around the country have repeatedly freed detained students on constitutional grounds, Trump’s team continues to push appeals, signaling that the battle is far from over.
Judge Young ended his opinion with a striking flourish: a copy of a postcard he had received, warning him that “Trump has pardons and tanks.” His reply, written into the ruling itself, was defiant: “Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States – you and me – have our magnificent Constitution.”
The question now is whether higher courts will stand with him—or with a presidency determined to test the limits of American free speech.
