A federal judge ruled on Friday that laws used by the Trump administration to cancel visas and initiate deportation proceedings against noncitizen college students based on their pro-Palestinian advocacy and criticism of Israel are unconstitutional.
Judge Noël Wise's ruling delivers a victory for the student newspaper at Stanford University, which stated that some international students were afraid to speak out because of deportation threats. The judge criticized the Trump government for attempting to infringe upon the free speech rights of foreign students.
Warning against a downward spiral for the First Amendment, the judge said that free speech in the United States is evidence of the strength of the country’s democracy. Wise wrote that freedom of speech is illusory if individuals are only free to express complementary views about the government and its leaders.