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Free Speech Just Won, Again
Landmark Ruling Gives Non-Citizens Their Voices Back
Donald Trump has always bragged about being the law-and-order president. But today, a federal judge in Massachusetts made clear that under Trump, “law and order” meant something else: silencing dissent, crushing academic freedom, and turning immigration enforcement into an ideological weapon.
In a blistering 161-page opinion, Judge William G. Young ruled that the Trump administration’s practice of arresting and deporting foreign students and scholars for their pro-Palestinian views was unconstitutional. Young, an 85-year-old Reagan appointee, didn’t mince words. He said the administration had transformed immigration law into a “tool of oppression” and compared its tactics to those of secret police.
The case wasn’t hypothetical. It centered on real people - students and researchers who suddenly found themselves yanked out of classrooms, detained, and threatened with deportation. Their crime? Speaking out. Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Badar Khan Suri weren’t accused of terrorism, fraud, or violence. They had voiced political opinions that the Trump administration wanted suppressed.
To build its case, the government leaned heavily on Canary Mission, a shadowy blacklist site notorious for targeting pro-Palestinian activists. State Department officials admitted they were told to dig up dirt, often recycling Canary Mission smears, to justify why certain students should be removed. The message to campuses across the country was unmistakable: criticize U.S. policy or Israel, and you might lose your visa - or worse, your freedom.
Judge Young saw this for what it was: state-sponsored intimidation. “No law means no law,” he wrote, invoking the absolute language of the First Amendment. While the government can regulate immigration, it cannot use deportation as a political cudgel. “This is more invidious,” Young explained - because it doesn’t just punish individuals, it terrifies entire communities into silence.
And it worked. One Harvard professor testified that after his colleague was arrested, he canceled academic travel, scrapped research, and even avoided visiting his terminally ill brother abroad, fearing he wouldn’t be allowed back into the U.S. The chill was so deep that people stopped writing, publishing, and teaching. That isn’t freedom. It’s coercion.
When government lawyers tried to brush this off as paranoia, Young shot back. “It is an odd kind of freedom that compels one to leave writing unpublished, leadership positions unpursued, and terminally ill relatives unvisited,” he wrote. That sentence alone should be taught in every constitutional law class in the country.
But Young went further. He ripped ICE for conducting masked raids on campuses, calling the practice “squalid and dishonorable.” America, he wrote, has never tolerated a “masked, armed, secret police.” Yet under Trump, ICE acted more like a militia than a law enforcement agency, hiding behind balaclavas as it dragged students into vans.
This was not just a rebuke of ICE. It was a rebuke of Trump himself. Young concluded that by defending and continuing this policy, Trump had violated his oath of office. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2024 immunity ruling, Trump won’t face personal consequences. But Young made sure the historical record is clear: this was unconstitutional, it was deliberate, and it came from the top.
The ruling also revealed something deeper about Trump’s style of governance. For all the talk about patriotism and defending the Constitution, his administration actively undermined its core protections. Free speech? Sacrificed. Academic inquiry? Muzzled. Dissent? Criminalized. Trump didn’t just bend the rules—he tried to remake America into a place where the government decides what you can and cannot say.
Judge Young refused to let that stand. In one of the ruling’s most memorable passages, he responded to an anonymous postcard he’d received that read: “Trump has pardons and tanks… what do you have?” His answer: “Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People have our magnificent Constitution.”
That is the heart of this case. For all the tanks, agents, masks, and secret lists, Trump’s machinery of suppression was stopped by a single principle: the First Amendment. A principle older than any one president, more enduring than any administration, and powerful enough to beat back even the most heavy-handed attempt to silence speech.
Trump’s defenders will say this was about national security, or about controlling immigration. But that spin collapses under the evidence. This was about silencing political views Trump didn’t like. Judge Young called it out. And in doing so, he didn’t just protect a few students - he protected the very idea of free speech in America.
The ruling will likely be appealed, of course. But the damage to Trump’s legacy is done. History will remember this case as a line in the sand: a reminder that the presidency does not give anyone the right to decide which opinions are acceptable, whether that be about support for Palestinians, or criticism of Trump himself.
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