Stanford student newspaper has said students were afraid to speak out
The Trump administration has defended its deportation campaign against noncitizens as targeting those who “disrupted college campuses while expressing their views.” On Friday, a federal judge in San Jose, California ruled that the campaign unconstitutionally silences critics of Israel’s war in Gaza.
U.S. District Judge Noël Wise struck down portions of the federal government’s deportation provisions, citing free-speech and vagueness flaws that violate the First and Fifth Amendments. In her opinion, Wise wrote that the freedoms of speech and the press are “foundational to America’s enduring democracy.”
The ruling is a victory for the student newspaper at Stanford University, which has said that some international students at the school were afraid to speak out because of the threat of deportation, the Associated Press reported.
The decision largely relies on findings made nearly a year ago by a U.S. district judge in Boston, who ruled that the Trump administration violated the Constitution when it targeted people who are not citizens for deportation solely for supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel, the AP reported.
In her opinion, Wise characterized the administration’s actions as a “quest to deport noncitizens who [the government] says disrupted college campuses while expressing their views,” the AP reported. The administration’s position, as reported by the AP, is that the removals target noncitizens who disrupted college campuses while expressing their views.