A federal judge ruled on Thursday that the academics who are part of a lawsuit alleging U.S. policy singles out noncitizens for detention over their pro-Palestinian activism can seek relief from the court if their immigration status is changed as retribution for taking part in the case.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge William Young follows a trial last year, in which he ruled that the Trump administration violated the Constitution when it targeted non-U.S. citizens for deportation solely for supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel. Young on Thursday issued what he described as “remedial sanction to protect certain of the Plaintiffs’ non-citizen members from any retribution for the free exercise of their constitutional rights.”
Kirsten Weld is a history professor at Harvard and president of university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which is a plaintiff in the suit. Weld called the ruling “historic” for several reasons.
“First, Judge Young affirmed unequivocally, without a doubt, that non-citizens lawfully present here in the United States have the same free speech rights as everyone else. So there is no double standard,” Weld said in a phone interview.
“The second reason is that Judge Young established that the federal government clearly and unconstitutionally pursued a policy of viewpoint discrimination against pro-Palestinian speech in particular,” she said.
During the hearing in the case earlier this month, Young maintained that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their agents had engaged in an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to limit the free speech of the plaintiffs, creating a chilling effect on their rights by their attempts to “pick off certain people.”
“The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries, ostensibly and president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment,” said Young, an appointee of the late Republican President Ronald Reagan. “There doesn’t seem to be an understanding of what the First Amendment is by this government.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
While they are not plaintiffs themselves, foreign students who’ve expressed pro-Palestinian views and later arrested by federal immigration authorities have been a central part of the case, including Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts Ph.D. student detained by plainclothes ICE agents in March, and former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil.
During last year’s trial, witnesses for the government acknowledged that the campaign targeted more than 5,000 pro-Palestinian protesters. Other witnesses for the plaintiffs testified to how the campaign stoked fear among academics and prompted some to stop their activism.
Öztürk was released in May from six weeks of detention after being detained in Somerville.
She said she was illegally detained following an op-ed piece she co-wrote in 2024 criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza
Young also issued an order to unseal the exhibits in the case, including those related to how the government targeted Öztürk, and its alleged evidence against her.
Jessie Rossman is legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts, which is one of Öztürk’s legal representatives.
“The only thing that is shocking about the documents that were unsealed is the clarity with which they demonstrate that the government’s arrest, transportation, and detention of Rümeysa Öztürk clearly violated her First Amendment rights.”
Documents posted by the court and reviewed by GBH News include memos between immigration enforcement officials, and “subject profiles” that include Öztürk’s travels over several years, the op-ed in question, and a profile on Canary Mission, a website targeting pro-Palestinian activists that is run by a pro-Israeli group.
“There was no evidence of any antisemitic activity; no evidence at any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or for antisemitism in general. There was simply no evidence for any of those claims as these documents make clear,” Rossman said.
