Federal judge in Boston warns Trump against targeting immigration status of students suing him

A federal judge in Boston has ordered the Trump administration to stop arresting or deporting international students and academic faculty involved in a First Amendment lawsuit against the federal government.

U.S. District Judge William G. Young ruled Thursday that the government must clearly prove any arrest, detention, or change in immigration status is based on a legitimate reason unrelated to retaliation, according to a Boston Globe report.

Young wrote that any attempt to change the immigration status of plaintiffs in the landmark case against the Trump administration will be presumed to be punishment for speaking out — unless the government can show strong evidence that the action was due to a crime, an expired visa, or another valid reason.

The lawsuit was filed by university faculty and academic groups, including chapters at Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers, after international students were arrested following pro-Palestinian activism. It names President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and ICE Director Todd Lyons as defendants.

In September, Young ruled that the federal government violated the free speech rights of students who were targeted for arrest and possible deportation after their public support of Palestinians in Gaza.

One such case was that of Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national who was taken from a Somerville street by plainclothed ICE agents in March. She was detained for six weeks in Louisiana and has since had her immigration record reinstated.

In his September decision, Young wrote that noncitizens who are lawfully present in the United States are entitled to the same free speech protections as citizens.

“This case ― perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court ― squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in the United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us,” Young wrote. “The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’”

Speaking to WGBH, Kirsten Weld, a Harvard history professor and president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors — a plaintiff in the case —  called Thursday’s ruling “historic.”

“First, Judge Young affirmed unequivocally, without a doubt, that noncitizens lawfully present here in the United States have the same free speech rights as everyone else. So there is no double standard,” Weld told the outlet.

“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.

The Trump administration is expected to appeal both Young’s September ruling and his latest order protecting the immigration status of the plaintiffs.

Morgan Rousseau is a freelance writer for Boston.com, where she reports on a variety of local and regional news.