A federal judge has criticized the Trump administration for trying to violate international students’ free speech rights.
A federal judge has ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration violated the constitutional rights of an international student who criticized Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
In California, District Judge Noel Wise on Friday sharply criticized the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security (DHS) after they attempted to deport noncitizens on protected speech grounds.
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“Let’s be clear: in the United States, free speech belongs to the people,” Wise wrote in his 90-page ruling. “That’s not something the government will take on.”
Wise, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, added that in the United States, speaking out about the government and its leaders is a sign of the health of the country’s democracy.
“The power of members of our society, citizens and non-citizens alike, is diminished when they self-censor and fail to ‘act’ or suffer government retaliation,” she says.
This ruling focuses on how the second Trump administration revoked the visas of international students studying in the United States and detained them for participating in pro-Palestinian advocacy activities.
The detention began in March 2025 with Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil.
Columbia was the epicenter of the student protest movement, and Khalil, a graduate student and permanent resident of the United States, had emerged as the student group’s chief negotiator.
Khalil, who is fighting his deportation in a separate case, praised the ruling in a social media post Saturday.
“No one should be afraid to speak out for Palestine,” Khalil wrote to X.
Arrests like Mr. Khalil’s were the basis of a lawsuit against U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the defendants in the case. In August 2025, Stanford University’s independent student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, filed a complaint alleging that some of the school’s non-citizen reporters chose not to cover pro-Palestinian protests because of the administration’s actions.
Two anonymous plaintiffs also joined the lawsuit, identifying themselves as foreign nationals with no criminal records. They said they felt the need to self-censor for fear of losing their student visas.
But the Trump administration has cited the Immigration and Nationality Act as a basis for justifying its deportation efforts.
Part of the law says the Secretary of State can “remove” an alien from the country if the alien’s presence could cause “potentially significant adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
But critics say this standard has been largely untested in courts and does not replace the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.
In his ruling, Wise criticized Rubio for what he called “substandard” enforcement of Rubio’s visa cancellation policy.
“The record reveals a clear pattern of enforcement actions taken by the government to revoke the visas of noncitizens since March 2025,” the judge wrote. “If a non-citizen criticizes the government or the causes or people it supports, the Secretary will revoke their visa. This is an example of “serious discriminatory coercion.”
Connor Fitzpatrick, an attorney with the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Freedom of Expression (FIRE), which filed the lawsuit, hailed the ruling as a victory for First Amendment rights.
“Today’s ruling proves that free speech is not a privilege, but an inalienable right of every man, woman, and child,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.
The Trump administration has faced other setbacks in its campaign to deport students.
For example, in September 2025, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that U.S. authorities violated the First Amendment when they tried to detain and deport undocumented students and academics for their pro-Palestinian advocacy.
The lawsuit was brought by a coalition of education groups, which argued that the deportation policy created a “climate of repression and fear on college campuses.”
Al Jazeera has contacted the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
