Trump admin unjustly revoked pro-Palestinian foreign students’ visas, judge finds

A federal judge in California ruled Friday the Trump administration unconstitutionally sought to deport international students for pro-Palestinian activism and criticism of Israel.

In a 90-page ruling , U.S. District Judge Noël Wise found the President Trump administration’s use of existing immigration law to cancel foreign students’ visas and deport them violated their constitutional right to free speech.

“In the United States, free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength,” Wise wrote.

“That strength is diminished when members of our society—citizens and noncitizens alike—must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation,” he continued.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed by Stanford University’s independent student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, last year. The paper claimed some of its writers in the U.S. on student visas had declined to cover pro-Palestinian protests or report on topics related to Israel’s military action in Gaza for fear they would face deportation.

In a legal complaint filed last August, the student paper — along with two anonymous plaintiffs not affiliated with the Daily — accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio and then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem of violating students’ constitutional rights with their immigration enforcement operations.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) , first enacted in 1952, grants the secretary of state the power to authorize a person’s deportation if he determined they jeopardized “a compelling foreign policy interest.”

Wise found that Rubio, along with other White House officials, used this provision to justify retaliation against non-U.S. citizens opposing the government’s stances.

The ruling memo cites several instances in which Trump administration officials labeled pro-Palestinian protesters “sympathizers” of Hamas, the militant group that orchestrated the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel. For the past year and a half, it continues, Trump and his allies repeatedly threatened to deport and revoke visas of college campus demonstration participants.

The document also references a January 2025 White House memo, which read, “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Wise, who was appointed by former President Biden to the Northern District of California, sided with the student paper. He found the Trump administration violated students’ First and Fifth Amendments when it relied on two provisions of the INA to use their speech as a basis for deportation.

The Hill has reached out to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

George Porteous, the student newspaper’s editor-in-chief, celebrated the ruling in a statement shared on social media Friday.

“The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation,” he wrote. “Today’s victory means they won’t have to.”

Attorney Conor Fitzpatrick, whose organization Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression represented the paper in this lawsuit, said in a statement that the ruling “proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.”