The federal judge Noël Wise has ruled that the plan of the Administration of the U.S. president, Donald Trump, to expel foreigners from the country for their political interventions violates the Constitution, as it clashes with the First and Fifth Amendments.
The case was brought by the newspaper "Stanford Daily" against the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, for applying the Immigration and Nationality Act with the aim of deporting international students, claiming that this practice intimidated them and discouraged them from writing critical opinion articles about the Government. "In the United States, freedom of expression belongs to the people. It is not a government option," Wise has argued, thus estimating the publication's lawsuit.
The complaint also includes an unidentified woman who resides in the United States with an old student visa and who, according to the documents submitted to the court, "avoided publishing her real opinions about Palestine and Israel and has deleted a social media account to avoid reprisals for her previous statements."
In her ruling, the judge emphasizes the relevance of constitutional protection of freedom of expression and reminds that "You can hate the content of a person's speech and love the country that harbors the freedom that allows it. A zealous protection of the constitutional right to freedom of expression is a demonstration of the powerful absence of fear in our country."
The ruling comes after the launch last year of a government campaign aimed at revoking visas and initiating deportation processes against pro-Palestinian foreign students. In that context, the activists from Columbia University Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, the doctoral student from Tufts University Rümeysa Öztürk, and the academic from Georgetown University Badar Khan Suri were expelled.