In an unusual effort to protect international students from retaliation by the Trump administration, a federal judge in Boston issued an order Thursday that limits the federal government’s ability to arrest or deport noncitizens involved in a landmark case against the government.
US District Judge William G. Young wrote that any change in the immigration status of members of the groups that filed the suit against President Trump and his administration last year will be presumed to be retribution and declared void unless the government can prove certain conditions.
The government must prove by clear and convincing evidence that any change was made because the noncitizen was convicted of a crime, their immigration visa or status had terminated by its own terms, or a specific legitimate reason.
Clear and convincing evidence shows that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem “have intentionally and in concert” implemented executive orders “to chill protected speech” and have violated the First Amendment in the process, Young wrote in a 10-page annotated judgment.
Threats by public officials “to continue detaining, deporting, and revoking visas based on political speech serves as circumstantial evidence that such enforcement exists ... and has objectively chilled the plaintiffs’ speech,” the judgment said.
The order comes in the wake of Young’s ruling in September that the Trump administration intentionally violated the free speech rights of noncitizens who were targeted for arrest and possible deportation after they spoke out or participated in protests in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
“This case ― perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court ― squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us,” Young wrote in his 161-page decision. “The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’ ”
Young wrote that Trump has repeatedly vowed to seek retribution against his detractors, “yet government retribution for speech (precisely what has happened here) is directly forbidden by the First Amendment.”
He said it was important to order remedies to protect the non-citizens who filed suit from retaliation by the Trump administration.
During a hearing last week, Young said he would issue an order that would be “crystal clear” that the government may not seek retribution against non-citizen students and faculty who “had the courage” to file the suit.
The suit was filed last March by the American Association of University Professors and its chapters at Harvard, New York University, and Rutgers University, as well as by the Tucson-based nonprofit Middle East Studies Association. It challenges the Trump administration’s policies of arresting and detaining noncitizen students and others engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy.
It names President Trump, Rubio, Noem, and Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The government is expected to appeal Young’s finding against the government, along with the order limiting its ability to alter the immigration status of those who brought the suit.
Young’s September ruling followed a two-week bench trial, where testimony focused on the federal government’s arrests of Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk; Columbia University students Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Yunseo Chung; and Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University.
Öztürk, a native of Turkey who is in the US on a student visa, was arrested in March by masked agents on a Somerville street and swiftly transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana,where she was held for about six weeks.
Her lawyers allege her arrest and detention were unlawful and violated her First Amendment rights because the government targeted her solely because she had co-authored an op-ed in the campus newspaper criticizing Israel’s attack on Gaza.
A federal judge in Vermont ordered her release after finding she had a convincing claim that the government had violated her rights to due process and free speech. She returned to campus in May, but legal proceedings in her case are pending in Vermont and in immigration court.
In the case before Young brought by the faculty and student groups, the government has argued that international student visas are a privilege, which can be revoked at any time, and that only immigration judges have jurisdiction over such matters.
But Young rejected those arguments, ruling that he has authority to decide whether the government has violated someone’s constitutional rights.
“How we treat our guests is a question of constitutional scope, because who we are as a people and as a nation is an important part of how we must interpret the fundamental laws that constrain us,” Young wrote in his September opinion. “We are not, and we must not become, a nation that imprisons and deports people because we are afraid of what they have to tell us.”
During a hearing last week over what relief he should order in the wake of his findings against the government, Young outlined his plan to issue an order aimed at protecting the international students and faculty members who filed the suit from retaliation.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs had urged Young to issue an injunction barring the government from arresting, detaining or deporting any non-citizens on the basis of speech. But, Young denied that request as overly broad.
Young said last week that his order will apply to people who were members of the groups that filed suit as of the time of his September ruling. The plaintiffs have not identified all members of those groups, and so it’s unclear how many people might have protection based on Young’s order.
Tonya Alanez of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
Shelley Murphy can be reached at shelley.murphy@globe.com. Follow her @shelleymurph.