Judge Rules Rubio’s Efforts to Deport Students Violated Their Right to Free Speech

The Trump administration violated the Constitution when it revoked visas and sought to detain noncitizen students for expressing dissent, particularly while condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza, a federal judge in California ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Noël Wise ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio violated the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment when he invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act to cancel student visas and initiate deportation proceedings. Rubio vowed in March 2025 to crack down on pro-Palestinian international students, saying in a news conference at the time, “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”

Tensions escalated last year after federal immigration authorities detained Mahmoud Khalil, a student protest leader at Columbia University, and Rümeysa Öztürk, a doctoral student at Tufts University who wrote an opinion piece for the student newspaper. Those arrests and others spurred criticism from free-speech advocacy organizations.

Stanford University’s student-run newspaper and an unnamed female student with an F-1 visa sued Rubio in August 2025, arguing that his policy was stifling free speech on college campuses. The Stanford Daily said in the lawsuit that international students were afraid to write news stories or opinion pieces in fear of having their visas revoked.

In her 90-page ruling Friday, Wise said “freedom of speech belongs to the people. It is not the government’s to take.” She said President Donald Trump’s administration has followed a pattern of targeting dissent, including pro-Palestinian support, critiques of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk after he was fatally shot, and opinions about the Iran war.

“This downward spiral is antithetical to our Constitution that recognizes our right to speak freely,” wrote Wise, a Joe Biden appointee. “Here you can simultaneously hate the content of a person’s speech and love the country that cherishes the freedom to allow it. Zealous protection of our Constitutional right to free speech is a provocative demonstration of our country’s powerful lack of fear.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday on Wise’s ruling.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil rights organization that helped litigate the case, said in a statement that Wise’s ruling “proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.”

While Wise’s ruling found the Trump administration’s actions to be unconstitutional, she stopped short of ordering the government to cease its deportation threats because only the Supreme Court has the authority to block that provision.