“Today’s decision makes clear that immigrants facing deportation don’t belong in a First Amendment black hole,” said Ramya Krishnan, Staff Attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “The government can’t close the courthouse doors to immigrants who claim the government is retaliating against them because of their political advocacy.”

ICE sought to deport Ragbir to Trinidad & Tobago. He has not lived there for 25 years, and deportation would separate him from his wife, his daughter, and his longstanding community in New York City. Although ICE could have sought Ragbir’s removal over a decade ago, it has done so under circumstances suggesting that it is Ragbir’s First Amendment-protected activism, not his immigration status, that is motivating ICE’s conduct.

The Knight Institute and Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) filed an amicus brief in the case in support of Ravi Ragbir. Multiple immigrants’ rights organizations are also plaintiffs in the case, which sought an injunction preventing the removal of Ragbir and other immigration activists based on their political speech.

In today’s decision, the court held that ICE’s retaliatory conduct was “outrageous,” and “[t]o allow [that] conduct to proceed would broadly chill protected speech, among not only activists subject to final orders of deportation but also those citizens and other residents who would fear retaliation against others.”

“Today's decision provides a crucial check against government suppression of disfavored views,” said ICAP executive director Joshua Geltzer, a lawyer formerly at the National Security Council staff and the Department of Justice’s National Security Division. “We’re glad to see the Second Circuit recognize that the Constitution does not allow the government to force immigrants to choose between remaining in the country or expressing their opinions.”

Read the decision here.

Read the amicus brief here.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, Communications Director, Knight Institute, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org.

About the Knight First Amendment Institute

The Knight First Amendment Institute defends the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Its aim is to promote a system of free expression that is open and inclusive, that broadens and elevates public discourse, and that fosters creativity, accountability, and effective self-government.

About Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection

Founded at Georgetown Law in 2017, ICAP draws on its leadership’s extensive background in national security law and policy to defend American constitutional rights and values. ICAP has previously engaged in litigation to protect the speech rights of immigrant activists, including being part of a team successfully defending on appeal a lower court decision striking down as unconstitutional a Texas law that made it a crime for local elected officials to advocate against cooperating in enforcing federal immigration policy.

“We applaud President Biden’s decision to pardon Mr. Ragbir, an immigrant rights advocate whom ICE attempted to deport under the previous administration because of his vocal opposition to the agency’s deportation tactics,” said Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute. “Pardoning Mr. Ragbir sends an important message about the constitutional legitimacy of his advocacy and the illegitimacy of targeting immigrants like him based on their criticism of government policy.”

In 2018, the Knight Institute, Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP), and the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Ragbir, arguing that the U.S. government’s retaliation against him and other immigrant-rights activists violated the First Amendment.

Earlier this week, the Knight Institute announced its support of  Mr. Ragbir’s pardon application, which also had the support of his federal sentencing judge, the federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, and the New York Attorney General, along with many faith leaders and human rights organizations and multiple members of Congress. 

Read today’s clemency  announcement here. 

Read the Knight Institute’s amicus brief in Ragbir v. Homan here.

Listen to the Knight Institute’s podcast featuring Mr. Ragbir, “Views on First: Speech & the Border Ep. 1: What are we so afraid of?” here.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org. 

“The Trump administration’s retaliation against Mr. Ragbir was calculated to silence not only him, but also the crucial voices of other advocates directly impacted by the federal government’s immigration policies,” said Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute. “Pardoning Mr. Ragbir would send an important message about the constitutional legitimacy of this kind of advocacy, and about the impermissibility of government retaliation against those engaged in it.”

In 2018, the Knight Institute, Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP), and the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Ragbir, arguing that the U.S. government’s retaliation against him and other immigrant-rights activists violated the First Amendment.

Mr. Ragbir’s pardon application has the support of his federal sentencing judge, the federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, and the New York Attorney General, along with many faith leaders and human rights organizations and multiple members of Congress. 

Read the Knight Institute’s amicus brief in Ragbir v. Homan here.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, adriana.lamirande@knightcolumbia.org

“Immigration, including the treatment of noncitizens, has been a touchstone of political debate in the United States,” said Ramya Krishnan, staff attorney at the Knight Institute. “Allowing the government to deport noncitizens for criticizing the nation’s immigration policies would silence crucial voices on a political issue central to the national conversation, and enable a practice that the U.S. government has condemned in other countries around the world.”

Ravi Ragbir, a prominent immigrant rights activist, filed suit to prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from deporting him to Trinidad & Tobago after 25 years of living in the United States. According to the lawsuit, Ragbir v. Homan, it was Ragbir’s First Amendment-protected activism that motivated ICE to begin removal proceedings. Ragbir seeks an injunction preventing his removal on this basis and preventing governmental retaliation against other noncitizen activists for the exercise of their First Amendment rights. The district court denied the injunction, and that decision is now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

“The use of deportation to quell dissenting voices should be concerning to all Americans,” said Amir Ali, Supreme Court and Appellate Counsel for the MacArthur Justice Center. “The trial court’s view that courts have no role to play here is manifestly wrong — the rule of law depends on the Second Circuit stepping in to correct that error.”

The amicus brief filed by the organizations responds specifically to ICE’s position that the law affords people in Ragbir’s circumstance no right to invoke the First Amendment as a shield. According to the brief, ICE’s view stems from a flawed interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Reno v. American–Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a case that addressed individuals alleged to have provided material support to a foreign terrorist organization — not activists engaged in peaceful issue advocacy. The brief also asserts that the pattern of retaliation against Ragbir and other activists is “outrageous,” because it violates the most fundamental guarantees of the First Amendment without serving a legitimate government interest. The brief argues that the government’s retaliation against Ragbir is not, therefore, immune from a First Amendment challenge.

“The right to engage in peaceful advocacy and protest lies at the very heart of the First Amendment," said Seth Wayne, a litigator at Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. "It's therefore particularly concerning to see the government retaliating against activists by seeking to remove them from the country as a way to silence them. We're proud to stand alongside the Knight Institute and the MacArthur Justice Center to defend essential First Amendment rights.”

Download the brief here.

About the Knight Institute

The Knight First Amendment Institute is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization established by Columbia University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to defend the freedoms of speech and press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Its aim is to promote a system of free expression that is open and inclusive, that broadens and elevates public discourse, and that fosters creativity, accountability, and effective self-government.

Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed the amicus brief in support of Ravi Ragbir in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Ragbir is a prominent immigrant rights activist who is seeking a preliminary injunction preventing ICE from deporting him to Trinidad & Tobago. He has not lived there for 25 years, and deportation would separate him from his wife, his daughter, and his longstanding community in New York City.

Although ICE could have sought Ragbir’s removal over a decade ago, it appears to have done so under circumstances suggesting that it is Ragbir’s First Amendment-protected activism, not his immigration status, that is motivating ICE’s conduct, the brief argues. Multiple immigrants’ rights organizations are also plaintiffs in the case, which seeks an injunction preventing Ragbir’s removal on this illegitimate basis as well as governmental retaliation against other activists for the exercise of their First Amendment rights.

“Voices like Mr. Ragbir’s have informed and energized a critical ongoing national debate over immigration,” said ICAP executive director Joshua Geltzer, a lawyer formerly at the National Security Council staff and the Department of Justice’s National Security Division. “Government retaliation against those speaking out offends the First Amendment. The tools of immigration enforcement are to be used to uphold the law, not to silence government critics.”

Today’s brief responds specifically to ICE’s troubling position that the law affords people in Ragbir’s circumstance no opportunity to assert their First Amendment rights. ICE’s view stems from its flawed interpretation of the 1999 Supreme Court decision in Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. That case addressed very different circumstances: The claims of non-citizens in the United States who were alleged to have provided material support to foreign terrorist organizations. The Supreme Court did not strip immigrants facing deportation of any chance to raise and attempt to vindicate their right to issue advocacy, the brief asserts.

ICAP and the Knight Institute further explain that, even if the Supreme Court’s decision in Reno were as broad as ICE claims, Ragbir’s case would fall within an exception preserved by the Supreme Court for “outrageous” government behavior. Because the government’s actions against Ragbir appear to have been caused by his exercise of core protected speech, because those actions were not justified by a legitimate government purpose, and because Ragbir’s case is part of larger pattern of viewpoint discrimination, the First Amendment bars ICE’s efforts at retaliatory removal.

“ICE’s emerging pattern of discriminatory and retaliatory removal of non-citizen activists burdens not only their own First Amendment rights, but also the rights of their community members — citizens and non-citizens alike — who want to hear what these activists have to say,” said Ramya Krishnan, a legal fellow at the Knight Institute.

The brief further argues that permitting ICE’s conduct to continue would enable that agency to wield the threat of deportation as a tool to suppress the speech of immigrants with whom the administration in power disagrees. It would also be at odds with our fundamental values as a nation: The United States regularly condemns other countries for targeted enforcement against protesters, government critics, and dissidents in other countries.

Download the brief. 

About the Knight First Amendment Institute

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization established by Columbia University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to defend the freedoms of speech and press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Our aim is to promote a system of free expression that is open and inclusive, that broadens and elevates public discourse, and that fosters creativity, accountability, and effective self-government.

About Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection

Founded at Georgetown Law in 2017, ICAP draws on its leadership’s extensive background in national security law and policy to defend American constitutional rights and values. ICAP has previously engaged in litigation to protect the speech rights of immigrant activists, including being part of a team successfully defending on appeal a lower court decision striking down as unconstitutional a Texas law that made it a crime for local elected officials to advocate against cooperating in enforcing federal immigration policy.

The case involves the highly public surveillance, arrest, transfer and attempted deportation of immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Ragbir, the executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, is an outspoken critic of ICE. For years, he has helped bring elected officials and clergy into ICE federal buildings to bear witness to the human costs of deportation. Last year, however, ICE began closing their public spaces to New Sanctuary Coalition volunteers, and, in January of this year, it conducted an apparently coordinated operation to surveil, arrest and deport two coalition leaders. ICE agents successfully deported New Sanctuary Coalition co-founder Jean Montrevil to Haiti that same month. In Ragbir’s case, a federal court intervened, issuing a temporary stay and ordering his release. But ICE continues to pursue his deportation.

Ragbir and Montrevil are not alone. Across the country, there have been more than 20 reported cases of immigrant rights activists being targeted by ICE after speaking out. Many people in the community have come to one conclusion: ICE is attempting to silence its critics.

In February, Ragbir, the New Sanctuary Coalition and several other immigrant rights groups filed a lawsuit challenging this disturbing “pattern and practice” on First Amendment grounds. The district court rejected the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction to enjoin Ragbir’s removal, concluding that it lacked jurisdiction based on a broad reading of a jurisdiction-stripping statute, 8 U.S.C. 1252(g). This jurisdiction-stripping did not raise constitutional concerns, the district court concluded, because Ragbir did not have a constitutional claim. (The plaintiffs’ request for a nationwide preliminary injunction against the selective enforcement of immigration laws remains pending.)

As the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, and the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center have explained in amicus briefing, the district court’s decision is wrong. There are more than 900,000 immigrants like Ragbir—people who are under final orders of removal, but who have been released from custody. There are millions more immigrants who have not yet gone through the immigration system, but may be subject to deportation. They do not belong in a First Amendment “black hole”—subject to retaliation by ICE for bringing to light the harms of ICE policies as only they, the directly impacted, can.

Immigration law, to be sure, is often unforgiving, and the Trump administration reads Reno v. AADC, decided almost 20 years ago, to have categorically foreclosed selective enforcement claims in the immigration context. Crucially, though, that case involved individuals placed into deportation proceedings for supporting an alleged foreign terrorist group. The Court reasoned that allowing the plaintiffs to pursue selective enforcement claims in that context would risk the disclosure of “foreign-intelligence products and techniques,” and threaten to delay proceedings, thereby intruding on prosecutorial discretion. As we explain in our brief, AADC did not address cases like Ragbir’s, which do not involve allegations relating to foreign terrorist organizations and where the claimed retaliatory conduct is the withdrawal of a stay and the carrying out of a decade-old removal order.

Even if AADC did apply here, what happened to Ragbir fits squarely within the exception the AADC court carved out for situations involving “outrageous” government conduct. What we have here is blatant retaliation—going beyond even “selective enforcement” in the classic sense. The enforcement of Ragbir’s deportation order in the ordinary course would have involved his being provided with notice that the time had come for deportation, as well as an opportunity to wrap up his affairs and depart—indeed, that was ICE’s own promise in the terms of his order of supervision. But ICE did not do that. It gave no notice or grace period. It did not even wait until its own grant of a two-year stay of removal had expired. Instead, after expressing his resentment of Ragbir’s political activities and criticism of ICE, the deputy director of the New York ICE Field Office abruptly arrested him, revoked his order of supervision without hearing, revoked his stay of removal, took him away from his wife and counsel without informing them of his location, and moved him 1,000 miles away to a private prison in Florida, with the goal of deporting him to Trinidad the next day. In the words of the habeas court that ordered his release, ICE’s actions were “unnecessarily cruel”—the types of acts we associate with “regimes we revile.”

On Monday, Judges John Walker, Pierre Leval and Christopher Droney will address these arguments at a critical time for immigrants in this country. The government will no doubt push to extend AADC beyond its narrow facts. Allowing it to do so, however, would enable the government to quash dissent from some of the most vulnerable members of our community—at a time when their voices most need to be heard.