BOSTON—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University yesterday filed and today made public an almost-two-hundred-page brief describing evidence presented during trial in a case challenging the Trump administration’s policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen faculty and students for their pro-Palestinian advocacy. The case was filed in the spring on behalf of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), AAUP’s Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers campus chapters, and the Middle East Studies Association. Judge William G. Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts oversaw a two-week trial that ended on July 21st. This was the first major trial of President Trump’s second term.

“As we showed at trial, the Trump administration has been targeting noncitizen students and faculty based on their lawful political expression,” said Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute. “This policy is at war with the First Amendment and has created a climate of fear on university campuses nationwide.”

Drawing on the evidence presented at trial, the brief provides copious detail about the Trump administration’s “ideological deportation” policy. The evidence shows that government officials targeted students for arrest and deportation on the basis of their protected political speech; that the government’s policy characterized pro-Palestinian advocacy and speech critical of Israel as antisemitic and “pro-Hamas”; and that the government adopted the policy to silence noncitizen scholars engaged in pro-Palestinian expression. The brief also argues that noncitizens lawfully admitted to the United States are fully protected by the First Amendment–a proposition that Justice Department lawyers disputed at trial.

Read the brief here.

For a summary of the evidence disclosed at trial, see here. 

Read more about the case here.

Lawyers on the case include Ramya Krishnan, Jameel Jaffer, Alex Abdo, Scott Wilkens, Carrie DeCell, Xiangnong (George) Wang, Talya Nevins, Jackson Busch, and Stephany Kim of the Knight First Amendment Institute; Ahilan Arulanantham; Michael Tremonte, Noam Biale, Alexandra Conlon, and Courtney Gans of Sher Tremonte; and Edwina Clarke and David Zimmer for Zimmer, Citron & Clarke.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected]