Federal court rules Trump administration's visa threats to student journalists unconstitutional

The Trump administration unconstitutionally threatened student journalists with deportation for speaking out about the Israel-Palestine conflict and other hot-button issues, a California federal court ruled on Friday in a lawsuit from Stanford University’s student newspaper.

“The government has offered a chilling message regarding protected speech — speak out against Israel or in support of Palestinians and we will revoke your visa and deport you,” District Judge Noël Wise, who was appointed by Joe Biden, wrote in her ruling.

“Behave. Noncitizen students heard the warning and heeded,” she wrote.

The suit, filed in August, argued that the Trump administration was violating students’ First and Fifth Amendments by threatening to revoke their visas under the Immigration and Nationality Act for sharing “anti-American” or pro-Palestinian views, which the White House often falsely conflates with being “pro-Hamas.”

The lawsuit, brought with support from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), claimed the policy cast a chilling effect over the paper’s operations, prompting contributors to stop submitting articles and sources to cease speaking with reporters for fear of facing prosecution.

Wise held that the administration’s campus crackdown, which has involved the arrest of pro-Palestine activists and academics across the country, was governed by “incomprehensible” standards and risked causing a “downward spiral” in free speech rights.

FIRE celebrated the ruling, arguing it was a milestone case and the first time a court has held the administration’s visa policies on this issue to be unconstitutional.

“In America, free speech doesn’t just belong to the people who say things the government agrees with,” FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “[Friday’s] ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.”

The Independent has contacted the White House and State Department for comment.

Friday’s decision comes after a different federal court in Massachusetts issued a blistering ruling in September about the administration’s student visa campaign.

There, the court held that the policies amounted to a “full-throated assault on the First Amendment across the board under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition” of antisemitism. That case is now on appeal.

The Trump administration has arrested and sought to deport international students whose involvement in the Palestine movement ranged from helping campus authorities negotiate with encampment protesters to co-writing an op-ed critical of Israel.