Citing the importance of the First Amendment, a federal judge in California says the U.S. government is unconstitutionally silencing critics of Israel and others in its quest to deport noncitizens who the government says have disrupted college campuses as they expressed their views.

Citing the importance of the First Amendment, a federal judge in California says the U.S. government is unconstitutionally silencing critics of Israel’s war in Gaza and others as part of the Trump administration ‘s quest to deport noncitizens who it says disrupted college campuses while expressing their views.

Judge Noël Wise, in a ruling Friday, delivered a victory for The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, which has said some international students were afraid to speak out because of the deportation threat.

“Freedom of speech is illusory if we are only ‘free’ to express complementary views about the government and its leaders,” the judge wrote.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
    31·
    9 hours ago

    I do a lot of work on college campuses, and last school year was my worst in business, because when MAGA started attacking foreign students last year, most of them went home, and took their money with them. That blew a hole in every college’s already established budget for the year, and they all had to cancel most of their events, including me.

    This year, they re-worked their budgets for the new year without so many foreign students, and things are mostly back to normal, except with a lot fewer foreign students. I’ve been talking to the few I come across, and they are nervous, but determined to get through it. I just spoke with a freshman girl from Botswana, and she’s either brave, or too naive to worry much about it. She said her Dad wanted to come with her to bring her to school, but his visa would have been $15,000, so she came by herself.