Yes, it’s a long post reporting on a much longer 161-page decision issued on Tuesday by a federal judge in Boston.
Judge William G. Young delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Trump administration’s efforts to deport foreign students and revoke visas in response to campus protests critical of Israel.
Young ruled that the First Amendment’s protections extend equally to non-citizens lawfully present in the United States, rejecting the administration’s claim that immigration status could be used to limit protest rights. “No law means no law,” Young wrote in his 161-page written decision, striking at the heart of the government’s argument.
The case was brought by national faculty and scholarly groups, including the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. They argued that visa cancellations, deportation threats, and arrests aimed at foreign students after the October 2023 Hamas attack — and subsequent pro-Palestinian protests — amounted to unconstitutional retaliation against protected speech.
The court agreed.
After a nine-day trial, Judge Young concluded that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and their agencies deliberately chilled lawful political speech by equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and misusing immigration laws intended for national security.
Two individuals became test cases: lawful permanent residents Yunseo Chung and Mahmoud Khalil, both targeted for removal after joining campus demonstrations. The government’s evidence relied heavily on names pulled from Canary Mission, a website cataloging pro-Palestinian activists. Neither student was accused of violence or material support for terrorism.
Chung obtained a restraining order blocking her arrest; Khalil was detained briefly in New York before another federal court intervened. Judge Young stressed that their activities — chanting, organizing, criticizing Israel — were squarely protected by the Constitution.
What the Judge Said About Israel and Free Speech
Judge Young took direct aim at the government’s attempt to label campus protests as “anti-Semitic” or “pro-Hamas.”
His words leave little room for doubt:
“Criticisms of the State of Israel are not anti-Semitism, they’re political speech, protected speech. Even strong, even vile criticisms of the State of Israel and its policies are protected speech under the First Amendment to our Constitution.”
He also stressed that political dissent cannot be recast as terrorism: “Criticism of the State of Israel … does not constitute pro-Hamas support. Pro-Hamas support has to be something more than that.”
Judge Young noted that the State Department’s own official guidance recognizes this distinction, cautioning that while some attacks on Israel can reflect anti-Semitism, criticism of Israel similar to that directed at any other country “cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
Bottom line: The government may not collapse political opposition into hate speech in order to silence it.
What the Judge Said About Masked Agents
Young’s decision hit hard against the political use of masked agents to spread fear and intimidation.
He began by rejecting testimony of government witnesses, including Tdd Lyons, acting director of ICE, as “ingenuous, squalid and dishonorable.”
Judge Young’s summary on this point is worth quoting at length.
ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence. Small wonder ICE often seems to need our respected military to guard them as they go about implementing our immigration laws. It should be noted that our troops do not ordinarily wear masks. Can you imagine a masked marine? It is a matter of honor — and honor still matters. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it. “We can not escape history,” Lincoln righty said. “[It] will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.” Abraham Lincoln,
Second Annual Message to Congress (Dec. 1, 1862).
Perhaps we’re now afraid to stick our necks out. If the distinguished Homeland Security intelligence agency can be weaponized to squelch the free speech rights of a small, hapless group of non-citizens in our midst, so too can the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, and the audit divisions of the I.R.S. and the Social Security Administration be unconstitutionally weaponized against the President’s ever growing list of“enemies” or opponents he “hates” notwithstanding that political persecution is anathema to our Constitution and everything for which America stands.
Finally, perhaps we don’t much care. After all, these Plaintiffs, a group of non-citizen pro-Palestinians are relatively small compared to the much larger interest groups who have every right vigorously to espouse the cause of the State of Israel. Palestine is far away and its people are caught up in the horrors of a modern war with heavy ordinance wreaking massive indiscriminate destruction, a war that is not one of our making. Why should we care about the free speech rights of their compatriots here among us?
Here’s why:
The United states is a great nation, not because any of us say so. It is great because we still practice our frontier tradition of selflessness for the good of us all. Strangers go out of their way to help strangers when they see a need. In times of fire, flood, and national disaster, everyone pitches in to help people we’ve never met and first responders selflessly risk their lives for others. Hundreds of firefighters rushed into the Twin Towers on 9/11 without hesitation desperate to find and save survivors. That’s who we are. And on distant battlefields our military “fought and died for the men [they] marched among.” Frank Loesser, “The Ballad of Roger Young”,
LIFE, 5 March 1945, at 117.
Each day, I recognize (to paraphrase Lincoln again) that the brave men and women, living and dead, who have struggled in our Nation’s service have hallowed our Constitutional freedom far above my (or anyone’s) poor power to add or detract. The only Constitutional rights upon which we can depend are those we extend to the weakest and most reviled among us.
Final Note
Judge Young’s decision underscores a basic principle too often tested in times of political tension: constitutional rights are not reserved for citizens alone. Whether citizen, permanent resident, or student on a visa, the same protections apply when it comes to speaking out.
Judge Young’s opinion makes the point plainly — protected speech is protected speech, no matter who the speaker is.
[Summary of the 161-page decision aided by ChatGPT]
