What’s New
The national American Association of University Professors (AAUP), three AAUP chapters, and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) are suing to stop the Trump administration from deporting noncitizen students and professors who advocate for Palestinian rights and other political causes.
The challenge comes as immigration authorities have taken into custody several visa holders and legal permanent residents, acting on directions from President Trump to crack down on international student protesters in the name of fighting antisemitism.
The Details
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Massachusetts district court, lawyers for the AAUP and MESA argued that the Trump administration’s actions violate the First Amendment by penalizing constitutionally protected speech. AAUP chapters at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, New York University, and Harvard University are also parties to the suit.
The 49-page complaint says the threat of deportation has created a climate of fear on college campuses, which has kept students and faculty from speaking freely.
“They’re avoiding political protests, hedging their social media and stepping back from leadership roles and public appearances with groups that are engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy,” said Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, which represents the plaintiffs. “They’re abstaining from public writing and scholarship that they otherwise would have pursued.”
The complaint includes several anecdotes from anonymous legal permanent residents who are members of the AAUP or MESA. According to one, a professor at a university in the Northeast recently pulled out of presenting on Israel and Palestine at an academic conference out of fear they could be deported. They have also stopped traveling out of the country for work. The faculty member, the complaint states, no longer signs open letters for fear of becoming a target and has decided not to pursue a leadership position in their AAUP chapter.
A spokesperson for the State Department declined to comment on ongoing or pending litigation. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said vandalism, building takeovers, and harassment against Jewish students did not constitute free speech, and that people who “advocate for violence and terrorism” should lose their visas and not be in this country. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said it makes “no apologies for its efforts to defend President Trump’s agenda in court and protect Jewish Americans from vile antisemitism.”
The Backdrop
On the campaign trail last year, President Trump promised to deport students who took part in what he considered to be “illegal” protests against the war in Gaza.
Shortly after taking office, the president signed an executive order directing government agencies to identify strategies for combating antisemitism. The order told agency leaders to make sure colleges were aware of the requirements for revoking visas so they could monitor international students and employees and refer reports to federal officials for investigation and potential deportation.
In a fact sheet the White House released the next day, the president warned campus activists: “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.”
A separate executive order that the lawsuit says also represents the administration’s “ideological-deportations policy” calls on federal agencies to conduct enhanced vetting of noncitizens applying for visas or already in the United States to ensure they do not pose a threat to national interests.
The first test of these new practices came in early March, when immigration authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and leader in last spring’s pro-Palestinian protests, at his university-owned apartment. Khalil, a legal permanent resident, has been detained in Louisiana ever since. He has not been charged with any crimes.
Since then, authorities have deported a Brown University medical professor to Lebanon, in defiance of a court order, and arrested a Georgetown University researcher accused of “spreading Hamas propaganda.” A federal judge blocked the Georgetown scholar’s deportation.
Another Columbia student activist is suing the Trump administration to try to prevent deportation after immigration agents went looking for her. And authorities have asked a Cornell University graduate student who was at the center of controversial protests in the fall to turn himself in.
The Stakes
Julia Rose Kraut, a legal historian and author of Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States, said one could trace the history of ideological deportation from the Alien Friends Act of 1798 to the “war on anarchy” during the early 20th century; from the mass deportations during the Red Scare to the Mexican repatriations of the 1930s to the McCarthy era.
She said foreign nationals being afraid or unable to speak out will cause “tremendous damage” to America’s academic standing on the world stage.
“Free speech and free exchange, including expressions of dissent and criticism of current United States policies, decisions and actions, are essential to democracy and self-government,” Kraut said. “It is vital to hear all voices, including the voices of foreign nationals and immigrants, on current issues of national and international importance.”
Aslı Ü. Bâli, a Yale Law School professor and president of MESA, told The Chronicle in an interview that the Trump administration’s policies affect all of MESA, and not just its noncitizen members.
“U.S. citizen members are equally harmed in the sense that they can no longer expect to be able to engage in a full spectrum of discussion and debate on important topics in the contemporary study of the Middle East,” Bâli said. “Their ability to partner with coauthors, their ability to co-organize conferences, workshops, panels — all of these things are being directly impacted.”
