The judge issues a scathing decision on the US government is trying to expel residents with pro-Palestinian opinions

The Trump administration violated the American Constitution when it targeted the non-citizens for expulsion only to support the Palestinians and criticizing Israel, a federal judge said on Tuesday in a scathing decision directly and clearly criticizing President Donald Trump and his policies as serious threats to freedom of expression.

The American district judge William Young in Boston agreed with several university associations that the policy which they described as an ideological expulsion violates the first amendment as well as the Act respecting the administrative procedure, a law governing the way in which federal agencies develop and issue regulations. Young also found that politics was “arbitrary or capricious because it reverses previous policy without motivated explanation”.

“This affair-perhaps the most important ever to be under the court of this district court-presents the question that non-citizens are legally present here in the United States have in fact the same rights of freedom of expression as us.

The applicants for the case welcomed the decision.

“The Trump administration’s attempt to deport students for their political opinions is an assault against the Constitution and a betrayal of American values,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors Union. “This trial exposed its real objective: to intimidate and silence anyone who dares to oppose them.”

The decision was made after a trial during which lawyers’ lawyers presented witnesses who testified that the Trump administration had launched a coordinated effort to target students and academics who had criticized Israel or shown sympathy for the Palestinians.

“Not since the McCarthy era, immigrants have been the target of such intense repression for legitimate political discourse,” Ramya Krishnan, the Knight First Institute, principal lawyer. “Politics creates a cloud of fear in university communities and is at war with the first amendment.”

“Disporageing” division: internal security

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Ministry of Internal Security, published a statement that did not directly deal with the decision, but declared that Young “soiled and demonized the application of federal law”, while referring to a deadly shooting this month in an Ice installation in Texas.

“Our ice forces of the ice should be thanked for risking their lives every day to arrest the murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members and terrorists instead of vilipped by sanctuary politicians,” she said. “It is discouraging that even after the terrorist attack and the recent arrests of rioters with firearms outside the ice installations, this judge decides to stir up the embers of hatred.”

Despite the McLaughlin declaration, the ice data itself revealed that a major majority of those held by the immigration authorities have no known criminal conviction or undergoing criminal accusation.

Lawyers from the Trump administration have set up witnesses who testified that there was no ideological expulsion policy, as the complainants claims.

John Armstrong, the senior official of the office of the Consular Affairs Office, testified that the revocations of the visas were based on the long -standing law of immigration. Armstrong acknowledged having played a role in revoking the visa of several high -level activists, notably Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, and was shown memos approving their withdrawal.

Khalil, a graduate of the University of Columbia, was released last month after 104 days in federal immigration detention. Married to an American citizen, Khalil continues to be vocal.

Ozturk, a student from Tufts University, was released in May six weeks in detention after being arrested in a street in Boston Suburban. She said that she had been illegally detained following an editorial co-written by Ozturk and three others, which criticized her school’s response to Gaza.

Unprecedented target, the ice manager testifies

Armstrong also insisted that the revocations of the visa were not based on protected speech and rejected the accusations that there was a policy to target someone for their ideology.

Peter Hatch, of the ICE internal security surveys, said the campaign was targeting more than 5,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and federal investigators have written about 200 who had potentially raped American law. Until this year, said Hatch, he did not remember that a student demonstrator be referred for a revocation of the visa.

The young secretary accused of internal security Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their agents to misuse their powers to target the non-citizens who were pro-Palestinians in order to silence them and, in so doing, “intentionally deny such individuals (including the applicants here) the freedom of speech”.

Young also criticized Trump in his 161-page decision, suggesting that he was supporting politics, even if he may not have authorized his operation.

“The facts prove that the president himself approves the truly scandalous and unconstitutional abolition of freedom of expression” on the part of two of his superior cabinet secretaries, he wrote.

Young will hold a separate hearing on the reparation requested by the complainants, which is probably a request that the Trump administration ceases to engage in ideological deportations.