The Trump administration violated the Constitution when it revoked visas and sought to detain noncitizen students for expressing dissent, particularly while condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza, a federal judge in California ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge Noël Wise ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio violated the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment when he invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act to cancel student visas and initiate deportation proceedings. Rubio vowed in March 2025 to crack down on pro-Palestinian international students, saying in a news conference at the time, “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”
Tensions escalated last year after federal immigration authorities detained Mahmoud Khalil, a student protest leader at Columbia University, and Rümeysa Öztürk, a doctoral student at Tufts University who wrote an opinion piece for the student newspaper. Those arrests and others spurred criticism from free-speech advocacy organizations.