Boston judge will decide if deportation efforts violated professors' free speech

A high-profile case about the rights of foreign scholars on U.S. college campuses is now in the hands of a federal judge in Boston.

The federal government and academic groups made their closing arguments Monday to U.S. District Court Judge William Young, who is expected to make a ruling in coming months.

The American Association of University Professors and other academic groups sued the Trump Administration, claiming it has created an illegal policy of targeting pro-Palestinian students and faculty here on visas for arrest and deportation.

"The goal is to silence students and scholars who wish to express pro-Palestinian views," said attorney Alexandra Conlon, who is representing the academic groups, in court on Monday. "What they are doing is unconstitutional."

As part of the case, the academic groups cited the detention of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish  doctoral student at Tufts University. The federal government cancelled Öztürk's student visa and arrested her in Somerville after she co-wrote an opinion piece in a campus newspaper critical of Israel. She has since been released while her deportation case proceeds.

The U.S. government insists it's enforcing longstanding rules that allow it to deport visitors who break the law or support terrorist groups. They said the plaintiffs only pointed to a small number of arrests of students.

"They talked about an announced intent to carry out large scale arrests based upon people who support pro-Palestinian protests," said William Kanellis, an attorney for the government. "Where's the evidence of that? There isn't."

During the two-week trial, federal officials testified that they scrutinized lists of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters, including many from a controversial online group called the Canary Mission, which says it identifies people that promote hatred of Israel. The government arrested some of the people on those lists, and continues to push for their deportations.

When plaintiff’s attorneys claimed Canary Mission was run by an extremist pro-Israel group, Young questioned why it was an issue.

"It's perfectly appropriate for the government to take leads from any source," Young said.

He said he struggled to understand how the plaintiffs' could prove the government had created a new policy to deter the academic groups and their members from speaking out against Israel.

He asked the government lawyers why the Department of Homeland Security officials who arrested Öztürk and others were allowed to wear masks.

"I don't know of a single law enforcement agency in the United States that permits their members — apparently at their option — to wear masks when carrying out their duty. Not one," Young said. "It would seem that the common sense inference is that that is to spread fear.”

Several university professors, including ones from Harvard and Brown, testified that they were afraid to speak out because of the arrest. Kanellis, the government lawyer, argued it has taken no action against the professors who testified.

The case raises questions about whether foreigners in the U.S. are entitled to the same First Amendment right to free speech as U.S. citizens. The academic groups claim they do, while lawyers for the Trump administration argued they don't.

"There are some really grave issues that this case does raise," said Michael Kagan, a University of Nevada Las Vegas law professor who has been following the case and written about the free speech rights of immigrants.

Kagan said he knows people who have refrained from speaking out for fear of retribution.

He said the plaintiffs face a number of legal hurdles to win the case.

However, some of the arrests in the case — like Öztürk’s — are likely to concern the judge, Kagan said.

"For men to grab a woman on the street, whisk her away to detention because of an op-ed — it's literally is the type of thing that in elementary school, American kids are taught, happens only in the old Soviet Union," he said.

However the judge rules, an appeal is likely, Kagan said.