On January 22, 2026, a federal court in Massachusetts ordered the Trump administration to cease arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen members of the AAUP and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) based on their pro-Palestine advocacy. Its order contained three parts. First, it declared that the Trump administration’s ideological deportation policy violated the First Amendment right of speech and the Administrative Procedure Act. “Secretaries Noem and Rubio have intentionally and in concert implemented Executive Orders 14161 and 14188,” said the court, a “viewpoint-discriminatory” policy to “chill protected speech” and “violate the First Amendment.” On similar grounds, the policy violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it is “contrary to a constitutional right.” The court found that the administration is “arbitrary and capricious” because it reversed prior policy without an reasonable explanation and was based on statutes that “have never been used in this way.” It highlighted that senior cabinet officials engaged in a “conspiracy” to “intentionally abridge the constitutional rights” of AAUP and MESA members. The order also credits the courageous testimony by AAUP and MESA members for illuminating the chilling impacts of the policy.
After finding the administration’s deportation policy illegal, the court declared that it “is of no effect,” “illegal,” and thereby vacated. Finally, the court ordered that noncitizen members of AAUP and MESA—so long as they were members at some point between March 25, 2025, and September 30, 2025—challenge any adverse changes to their immigration statuses in federal district court and be awarded a presumption that such a change is in retribution for First Amendment protected activity. To challenge this presumption, the government must prove by clear and convincing evidence, a high bar, that the individual was convicted of a crime after September 30, 2025, that there was an appropriate reason for the change in status, or that their status had already expired.
The order was the culmination of a suit filed by AAUP and MESA in March 2025 challenging the administration’s ideological deportation policy as a violation of the First Amendment rights of both citizen and noncitizen students and faculty. The policy, they argued, chilled lawful speech and association across US campuses. The case went to trial for nine days in July and featured the testimony of fifteen witnesses that compelled the disclosure of new information about the policy and its sweeping impacts across campuses nationwide. The court issued a landmark ruling in September, finding that the administration deliberately violated the First Amendment rights of international students and faculty for arrest and deportation to silence criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza. The secretaries’ intent, Judge Young wrote, was “to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act . . . [to] pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated non-citizens (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence.”
Emphasizing the case’s historic significance, Judge Young concluded unequivocally that noncitizens lawfully present in the United States enjoy the same free speech rights as citizens: “This case—perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court—squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in [the] United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’ ‘No law’ means ‘no law.’”