“Ideological Deportation”: AAUP v. Rubio Trial Challenges Trump Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Students

The first trial in a case challenging the Trump administration’s policy of detaining and deporting international students and professors who participate in pro-Palestinian activism is underway in Boston. The American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association brought the lawsuit. Government lawyers tried to get it dismissed, but U.S. District Judge William Young, an 84-year-old Ronald Reagan nominee, ordered a trial, saying it was the “best way to get at truth.”

“Students and faculty all over the country are quite literally terrified about the possibility that their advocacy and expression will lead to detention,” says Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and one of the lawyers challenging the Trump administration. “They are terrified that ICE agents will show up at their door any day and take them away.”