Politico’s senior law reporter called it “the most scathing legal rebuke of the Trump era.”
Mahmoud Khalil, former Columbia University graduate student known for his role in the 2024 Columbia University pro-Palestinian protests, leads a Pro-Palestinian “March for Humanity” against the humanitarian crisis in Gaza on August 16, 2025 in New York City.
(Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Sep 30, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
A federal judge issued an emphatic ruling Tuesday that the Trump administration acted illegally when it targeted pro-Palestinian student activists for deportation, describing it as part of an effort to “strike fear” into protesters exercising their First Amendment rights.
In the 161-page ruling, US District Judge William Young, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, concluded that the Trump administration undertook illegal efforts “unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech.”
Slamming ‘Fascist Tactics’ of Trump, Mahmoud Khalil Fights Judge’s Deportation Decision
He also launched a broadside against the Trump administration’s entire authoritarian ethos, describing President Donald Trump’s “palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains.”
Politico‘s senior law reporter Kyle Cheney described the ruling as “the most scathing legal rebuke of the Trump era.” Young himself called it the most important he’s ever issued in over 30 years on the bench.
The first page immediately captures this gravity, containing a scan of an anonymous postcard Young received in June as a prologue: “Trump has pardons and tanks... what do you have?” the sender asked.
Young included his response: “Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People ... have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works out in a specific case.”
The case was launched following a lawsuit from the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, which represent hundreds of college professors around the US who testified that they felt intimidated by what they described as “ideological deportations” by the Trump administration of students who expressed pro-Palestinian views.
Often without warning, the State Department revoked nearly 1,700 visas from lawful immigrants before targeting many of them for deportation under an executive order by Trump that allegedly responds to “antisemitism,” but in practice extends far out to encompass any expressions of solidarity with Palestinians or criticisms of Israel.
During the trial, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) acknowledged that it determined who to target using an anonymously operated pro-Israel “doxxing” website known as the Canary Mission, which publishes dossiers on college students around the country who express unfavorable views about Israel.
One of those students was Mahmoud Khalil, an activist at Columbia who held a green card, who was whisked away from his address in the middle of the night by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and sent to a detention facility for months. As Young acknowledged in his ruling, Troy Edgar, the deputy secretary of homeland security, stated plainly in an interview that the effort to deport Khalil was because of “basically pro-Palestinian activity.” After a federal judge ordered Khalil’s release, the Trump administration began efforts to deport him to Algeria or Syria.
ICE agents also snatched Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts, off the street in broad daylight after she co-wrote an op-ed calling for her university to divest from companies participating in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Although the administration acknowledged that Öztürk, who had a legal student visa, committed no crime, she remained in an ICE detention facility for more than six weeks before a judge ordered her release.
Young said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials, such as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees ICE, “acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment-protected political speech.”
He refuted the professors’ contention that the administration had waged an “ideological deportation policy,” which he said “could have raised a major outcry.” Instead, Young said, their intentions were “more invidious—to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act (in ways it had never been used before) to have them publicly deported with the goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated noncitizen (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome.”
To strip visas “solely on the basis of political speech, and with the intent of chilling such speech,” Young said, “is not only unconstitutional, but a thing virtually unknown to our constitutional tradition.” The First Amendment of that Constitution, he added, “does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens.”
Young did not order any changes to Trump administration policy with his ruling, but only because Trump “poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech” as a whole, and further proceedings would be necessary in order to rein in those abuses more comprehensively.
He specifically identified the use of masks by ICE agents during arrests, which he described as “disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable.”
“ICE goes masked for a single reason: to terrorize Americans into quiescence,” Young said. “In all our history, we have never tolerated an armed, masked secret police.”
The final 12 pages of the ruling, which American Immigration Council fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick described as “truly remarkable,” focus on “the nature of our president himself,” who Young said “simply ignores” rulings he dislikes.
Young concluded that the courts, which he described as one of the few remaining bulwarks to Trump’s excesses, needed to do more than issue nonbinding cease-and-desist orders, but instead issue permanent injunctions that can result in contempt charges if the administration refuses to stop illegal policies.
Trump, he said, is not “entirely lawless,” but “has learned that—at least on the civil side of our courts—neither our Constitution nor our laws enforce themselves and he can do most anything until an aggrieved person or entity will stand up to him and say ‘Nay.‘”
Young also put the responsibility of resistance on the institutions that have capitulated to Trump’s demands.
“Our bastions of independent, unbiased free speech–those entities we once thought unassailable—have proven all too often to have only Quaker guns,” he warned. “Behold, President Trump’s successes in limiting free speech—law firms cower, institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease the president, media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism.”
“I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected,” he wrote in conclusion. “Is he correct?”
Trump's masked ICE agents compared to KKK by Reagan-appointed judge
Matthew Chapman
September 30, 2025
RAW STORY
Masked law enforcement officers, including HSI and ICE agents, walk into an immigration court in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Caitlin O'Hara
A federal judge in Massachusetts stunned observers on Tuesday with a scathing 161-page rebuke of President Donald Trump's administration for terrorizing noncitizen students for exercising their free speech rights to protest the Israeli occupation of Gaza. At various points, he criticized the administration's assault on basic constitutional rights and even addressed someone who sent his court a threatening message to deter a ruling against Trump.
But Judge Bill Young, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, did something more than that, noted CBS justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane: he went out of his way to compare Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the infamous white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, noting both groups use masks to hide their identities and spread fear more effectively.
The Trump administration has claimed that ICE agents' controversial practice of wearing masks is to protect officers' safety — an idea that Young thoroughly rejected.
"This Court has listened carefully to the reasons given by [Rümeysa] Öztürk’s captors for masking-up and has heard the same reasons advanced by the defendant Todd Lyons, Acting Director of ICE," wrote Young. "It rejects this testimony as disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable. ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence. Small wonder ICE often seems to need our respected military to guard them as they go about implementing our immigration laws. It should be noted that our troops do not ordinarily wear masks. Can you imagine a masked marine? It is a matter of honor — and honor still matters."
"To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan," wrote Young. "In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it."
Young concluded this thought with a quote from former President Abraham Lincoln's second annual message to Congress in 1862: “We can not escape history ... [It] will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”
The judge is not alone in his criticism; many law enforcement experts have condemned the use of masks in immigration raids and arrests, with retired police chief and Brown University professor Brandon del Pozo saying, "I never for a second thought of hiding my face from the public, hiding my face from the people I policed. Nor did any cop that I knew and worked with. And we were proud that we had the courage to do our jobs that way."
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