US Judge Rules Against Trump Administration's Efforts to Deport Pro-Palestinian Students

A US federal judge has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump violated the constitutional rights of international students when it sought to punish them for criticizing Israel's war in Gaza.

On Friday, in California, District Judge Noel Wise criticized the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after these agencies attempted to deport non-citizens for protected speech.

“Simply put, in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people. It is not something the government can take away,” Wise said in his 90-page ruling.

Wise, who was appointed under former President Joe Biden, added that in the US, speaking out about the government and its leaders is a testament to the health of the nation's democracy.

The ruling focused on the second Trump administration's revocation of visas and detention of international students studying in the US after they participated in pro-Palestinian activities.

The detentions began with Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil in March 2025. Columbia had been a focal point of the student protest movement, and Khalil, a doctoral researcher and lawful permanent resident in the US, emerged as a key negotiator for student groups.

Khalil, who is fighting his deportation in a separate lawsuit, praised the ruling on social media on Saturday.

“No one should be afraid to speak out for Palestine,” Khalil wrote on X.

Arrests like Khalil's formed the basis of the lawsuit against Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the defendants in the case. In August 2025, Stanford University's independent student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, filed a complaint alleging that some of its non-citizen reporters chose not to cover pro-Palestinian demonstrations due to the administration's actions.

Two anonymous plaintiffs also joined the lawsuit, identifying themselves as foreigners with no criminal record. They said they also felt compelled to self-censor out of fear of losing their student visas.

However, the Trump administration cited the Immigration and Nationality Act to justify its deportation efforts.

Part of this law stipulates that the Secretary of State may “exclude” foreigners from the country if their presence could cause “potentially serious foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

But critics argue that this standard is largely untested in court and cannot replace the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects freedom of speech.

In his ruling, Judge Wise criticized Rubio's enforcement of the visa revocation policy, which he described as “standardless.”

“The record shows a clear pattern in the enforcement actions the government has taken to revoke visas of non-citizens since March 2025,” the judge wrote. “The Secretary revokes visas when non-citizens criticize the government or the objectives or people the government supports. This represents a serious discriminatory enforcement.”

Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney at the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Free Expression (FIRE), which filed the lawsuit, welcomed the ruling as a victory for First Amendment rights.

“Today's ruling demonstrates that freedom of speech is not a privilege, but an inviolable right of all people,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

The Trump administration has faced other setbacks in its student deportation campaign. In September 2025, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that US officials violated the First Amendment when they attempted to detain and deport non-citizen students and scholars for pro-Palestinian activities. The case was brought by a coalition of educational groups, arguing that the deportation policy created a “climate of repression and fear on college campuses.”