Academics Sue To Block Trump From Disappearing Students Over Their Political Views

Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the U.S., was snatched from inside Columbia University student housing in front of his pregnant wife. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar studying at Tufts University, was grabbed off the street by six officers on her way to meet friends for dinner. Federal agents raided the Barnard College dormitory room of Yunseo Chung, 21-year-old high school valedictorian and a permanent resident of the U.S. since she was seven, arresting her after she attended a protest at Columbia. Donald Trump’s administration is now seeking to deport Khalil, Ozturk, and Chung.

They are among the “more than 300” students, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who have been targeted for removal or revocation of their visas on the basis of their political views. (“We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics,” Rubio told a reporter on Thursday, referring to students he was seeking to expel from the country.) 

Each of those three, and others who have been singled out by the Trump administration, are being represented by lawyers challenging their individual deportation orders. But on Tuesday, lawyers at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University brought a broader challenge to the administration’s ideologically-motivated deportation policy, in an effort to prevent additional students and academics from being kicked out of the country over pro-Palestinian advocacy and activism against Israel’s war in Gaza.

“Frankly, I don’t think we have seen the government do what it has done here before. This is unprecedented,” says Ramya Krishnan, a senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute and the lead attorney on the case. “The most obvious analogy would be to McCarthyism, but even during the McCarthy era, I don’t think you saw the government round up student and faculty protesters based on their political viewpoint, the way that you are seeing the government do here.”

In court, the Trump administration has invoked the “foreign policy” provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act to justify its deportation efforts. That law, Ahilan Arulanantham and Adam Cox explained in a piece for Just Security, says a noncitizen can be deported if the Secretary of State has reason to believe his or her presence in the country “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” 

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The same statute includes an exception prohibiting deportations on the basis of “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States” — as well as an exception to that exception: “unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s [presence] would compromise a compelling

United States foreign policy interest.” Rubio has cited that provision in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, arguing that Khalil’s continued presence undermines America’s objective of combating antisemitism at home and abroad.

Krishnan and her team reject the government’s rationalization. “We think that the First Amendment forecloses the administration from relying on these provisions in this way, because it is engaging in blatant viewpoint discrimination by targeting only pro-Palestinian advocacy — and the First Amendment prohibits the state from engaging in viewpoint discrimination,” she says plainly.  

The Knight Institute lawsuit — filed on behalf of American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, groups that include both citizens and noncitizens — argues that the administration is violating their members’ First Amendment rights to hear from and engage with their colleagues.

The groups’ U.S. citizen members have been harmed because “they’re unable to organize with [noncitizens], to attend protests alongside them, or even to collaborate on academic projects. This affects their political and academic expression,” Krishnan says. Deportation threats have have “a very significant impact” on the group themselves too, she says — hampering their ability “to pursue their missions, because they’re unable to as effectively represent the interests of all of the members, which include noncitizens, and because they’re deprived of the insights and perspectives of these noncitizens.”

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While the First Amendment protects both the right to to receive information and the right to disseminate it, Krishnan says team chose to rely on the interests of the listener, frankly, because noncitizen members of the plaintiff associations “are really afraid that their connection with this lawsuit could lead to possible retaliation by the government against them, and that they could be targeted for deportation simply for having their stories told as part of this lawsuit.”

Retaliation is obviously not an idle concern — for either the academics, the universities where they study and work, or the lawyers arguing their case. The Trump administration has threatened to strip colleges and universities, including Columbia University, of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding over their failures to rein in student protests, and the president has also issued executive orders targeting law firms he perceives as hostile toward him and his interests.

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“These efforts to deport noncitizen students and faculty shouldn’t be seen in isolation,” Krishnan says. “They’re part of a much broader assault on free speech and democratic institutions — an assault that includes targeting lawyers who bring cases on behalf of this administration’s political opponents, lawyers that bring cases that challenge the administration’s actions in courts. The president and other administration officials have made no bones about the fact that part of their strategy here is to intimidate lawyers who would otherwise hold them accountable in court.” 

“It’s all sort of part of the same story,” she says.