Unsealed internal documents affirmed that the administration arrested and sought to deport pro-Palestine activists “solely on protected expression,” as one rights group put it.
Demonstrators protest the Gaza genocide at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 25, 2025.
(Photo by Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Jan 23, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
A federal judge on Thursday unsealed documents showing that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally approved the deportation of university students after receiving memos highlighting their involvement in constitutionally protected campus protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Massachusetts-based Senior Judge William G. Young—an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan—unsealed 105 pages of documents he initially kept under wraps because they contained details regarding federal investigations. Young granted a request by media outlets including the New York Times to unseal the files as a matter of public interest.
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Last year, Young ruled that the Trump administration broke the law by targeting pro-Palestine student activists in a bid to “unconstitutionally... chill freedom of speech.”
The unsealed documents include Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos recommending that five student activists who were legally in the United States—Yunseo Chung, Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri, and Rümeysa Öztürk—be deported, despite there being no evidence of wrongdoing.
“There are few things more un-American than masked agents throwing dissenters in the back of a van because the government doesn’t like what they have to say,” Conor Fitzpatrick, supervising senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—which sued the administration over the unconstitutionality of its efforts—said Friday in a statement.
“But these documents prove that it was the students’ opinions alone, and not any criminal activity, that led to handcuffs and deportation proceedings,” Fitzpatrick added. “The First Amendment means the government cannot punish speakers for their opinions, but that is exactly what the government is doing.”
As the Times reported Friday:
The documents indicate that in nearly all instances, the arrests of the students were recommended based on their involvement in campus protests and public writings, activities that the Trump administration routinely equated to antisemitic hate speech and support for terrorist organizations. They also show that officials privately anticipated the possibility that the deportations might not hold up in court because much of the conduct highlighted could be seen as protected speech.
“Given the potential that a court may consider his actions inextricably tied to speech protected under the First Amendment, it is likely that courts will scrutinize the basis for this determination,” stated one memo on Madhawi, a Columbia University student and permanent US resident.
In another document, Trump administration officials admitted there were no grounds for deporting the students, but noted the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to US foreign policy interests.
Rubio cited the law to target pro-Palestine students for deportation, a stance that was rebuked in a June 2025 ruling from US District Judge Michael Farbiarz, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, who found that Khalil’s “career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled” by the Trump administration’s actions.
In May 2025, US District Judge William Sessions III—who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton—ordered the release of Öztürk. The Turkish PhD student at Tufts University was illegally snatched off a Massachusetts street in March 2025 and taken to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lockup in Louisiana after she published an opinion piece in a student newspaper advocating divestment from apartheid Israel.
“There has been no evidence that has been introduced by the government other than the op-ed,” Sessions wrote in his ruling.
One of the newly unsealed State Department documents states that DHS and ICE have “not provided any evidence showing that Öztürk has engaged in any antisemitic activity or made any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or antisemitism generally.”
Fitzpatrick stressed that “this can’t happen in a free society.”
“It can’t happen in a free America,” he added. “We’ll continue to fight this egregious violation of the Constitution every step of the way.”
Bringing Gaza Home to Middle America
Can eight jurors be made to understand why four activists blocked the entrance to a senator’s office to protest the Gaza genocide?
From left: Steve Masternak, Mike Ferner, Nancy Larson, and Al Compaan block the entrance to US Sen. John Husted’s Toledo office on October 3, 2025.
(Photo by Sean Nestor)
Mike Ferner
Jan 25, 2026
93 people would have starved to death;
737 would be imprisoned without charges or trial;
450,170 tons of bombs would have been dropped on our county in two years—four times what was dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, London, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki combined in World War II;
Over 34,300 people would be wounded; over half women and children;
324,520 people (75% of the county population) would be infected with disease from polluted water and open sewers;
384,500 people (90% of the population) would have endured severe lack of food;
Over 90% of residential buildings would be destroyed and 92% of all schools would require complete reconstruction;
264,000 people (62% of the population) would have lost legal documentation for property ownership; and
Over 340,000 unexploded bombs would lie buried in Lucas County.
Our hope at trial is that our fellow citizens and neighbors will be as horrified by what Gazans have suffered as we are and decide it’s time to stand and be counted, that blocking the entrance to a senator’s office is a minimal response to a genocide.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Mike Ferner
Mike Ferner is national director of Veterans For Peace and a former member of Toledo City Council.
Full Bio >
Can eight jurors be made to understand why four activists blocked the entrance to a senator’s office to protest the Gaza genocide?
From left: Steve Masternak, Mike Ferner, Nancy Larson, and Al Compaan block the entrance to US Sen. John Husted’s Toledo office on October 3, 2025.
(Photo by Sean Nestor)
Mike Ferner
Jan 25, 2026
Common Dreams
Will a jury in Middle America’s flyover country care enough about the genocide in Gaza to acquit four protesters arrested for nonviolent civil resistance? Will it matter once they’ve seen “Bringing Gaza Home?”
That’s the question eight jurors will decide in Toledo a few weeks from now when they hear from four activists arrested October 3 for blocking the entrance to the local office of US Sen. John Husted (R-Ohio). They, along with the local peace movement, had run out of patience with Husted because of his continuing support for Israel’s genocide.
The final straw was when Husted refused to even make a statement supporting our friend and fellow Toledoan, Phil Tottenham, a former Marine, who was abducted in international waters by Israel during last fall’s Sumud Flotilla. That simply demanded the strongest nonviolent response we could make. We simply could not sit in comfort here in Toledo and watch this obscenity and simply hold a sign on a street corner to protest. We had to do more.
The other three people arrested were Al Compaan, professor emeritus of physics, University of Toledo; Nancy Larson, retired counselor-social worker; and Steve Masternak, retired industrial engineer. Two others were arrested but have since pled guilty and paid fines.
Our hope at trial is that our fellow citizens and neighbors will be as horrified by what Gazans have suffered as we are and decide it’s time to stand and be counted.
Information we will show the jury is included in the extensively documented Veterans For Peace report, Bringing Gaza Home. The report is compiled from information published by international news outlets such as the Guardian, Al Jazeera and Anadolu Agency, reporting on the effects of two years of Israel’s US-funded genocide in Palestine.
What makes it local to Toledo, county seat of Lucas County, Ohio, is comparing the destruction in Gaza to what Lucas County would be like after similar bombardment. The methodology simply compares Gaza’s area and population to Lucas County’s and calculates the comparable numbers.
We will hold up large photos and show videos of human casualties and physical destruction in Gaza, and describe to jurors what the effect would be in our own neighborhoods. We will tell the jury, “If this sounds utterly impossible or like a horror movie script, it’s neither. But for the grace of God this could be us instead of Gaza.”27,292 county residents would be dead, including 350 medical personnel, 528 people seeking food aid from official sites, and 61 reporters and media workers;
Will a jury in Middle America’s flyover country care enough about the genocide in Gaza to acquit four protesters arrested for nonviolent civil resistance? Will it matter once they’ve seen “Bringing Gaza Home?”
That’s the question eight jurors will decide in Toledo a few weeks from now when they hear from four activists arrested October 3 for blocking the entrance to the local office of US Sen. John Husted (R-Ohio). They, along with the local peace movement, had run out of patience with Husted because of his continuing support for Israel’s genocide.
The final straw was when Husted refused to even make a statement supporting our friend and fellow Toledoan, Phil Tottenham, a former Marine, who was abducted in international waters by Israel during last fall’s Sumud Flotilla. That simply demanded the strongest nonviolent response we could make. We simply could not sit in comfort here in Toledo and watch this obscenity and simply hold a sign on a street corner to protest. We had to do more.
The other three people arrested were Al Compaan, professor emeritus of physics, University of Toledo; Nancy Larson, retired counselor-social worker; and Steve Masternak, retired industrial engineer. Two others were arrested but have since pled guilty and paid fines.
Our hope at trial is that our fellow citizens and neighbors will be as horrified by what Gazans have suffered as we are and decide it’s time to stand and be counted.
Information we will show the jury is included in the extensively documented Veterans For Peace report, Bringing Gaza Home. The report is compiled from information published by international news outlets such as the Guardian, Al Jazeera and Anadolu Agency, reporting on the effects of two years of Israel’s US-funded genocide in Palestine.
What makes it local to Toledo, county seat of Lucas County, Ohio, is comparing the destruction in Gaza to what Lucas County would be like after similar bombardment. The methodology simply compares Gaza’s area and population to Lucas County’s and calculates the comparable numbers.
We will hold up large photos and show videos of human casualties and physical destruction in Gaza, and describe to jurors what the effect would be in our own neighborhoods. We will tell the jury, “If this sounds utterly impossible or like a horror movie script, it’s neither. But for the grace of God this could be us instead of Gaza.”27,292 county residents would be dead, including 350 medical personnel, 528 people seeking food aid from official sites, and 61 reporters and media workers;
93 people would have starved to death;
737 would be imprisoned without charges or trial;
450,170 tons of bombs would have been dropped on our county in two years—four times what was dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, London, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki combined in World War II;
Over 34,300 people would be wounded; over half women and children;
324,520 people (75% of the county population) would be infected with disease from polluted water and open sewers;
384,500 people (90% of the population) would have endured severe lack of food;
Over 90% of residential buildings would be destroyed and 92% of all schools would require complete reconstruction;
264,000 people (62% of the population) would have lost legal documentation for property ownership; and
Over 340,000 unexploded bombs would lie buried in Lucas County.
Our hope at trial is that our fellow citizens and neighbors will be as horrified by what Gazans have suffered as we are and decide it’s time to stand and be counted, that blocking the entrance to a senator’s office is a minimal response to a genocide.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Mike Ferner
Mike Ferner is national director of Veterans For Peace and a former member of Toledo City Council.
Full Bio >
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