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The Stanford Daily newspaper on Wednesday sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, claiming Donald Trump’s immigration policies have impeded the free speech rights of student journalists.
Trump has vowed on various occasions to deport international students who support Palestine, like on his campaign website, where he said the deportations would “make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.”
Stanford journalists have “self-censored by declining to cover pro-Palestinian protests” at the university and seeking to remove past articles in fear of these policies, according to the lawsuit.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit that seeks to defend free speech, helped file the lawsuit that claims the federal government is abusing laws to deport students who are legally present.
Specifically, it takes aim at two immigration statutes: One that allows the secretary of state to begin the process of deporting someone if their speech “compromises” a foreign policy interest and another that enables them to revoke a visa “at any time” at their discretion.
The nonprofit believes the laws are being used unconstitutionally and, through a preliminary injunction, it hopes to pause the government from using the immigration statutes while the case is ongoing.
“Their attack is casting a pall of fear over millions of noncitizens, who now worry that voicing the ‘wrong’ opinion about America or Israel will result in deportation,” the nonprofit wrote in a statement.
The federal administration has sought to deport multiple international college students who have protested or written publicly about the war in Gaza, like Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University who was suddenly taken to an immigration detention center after she wrote an opinion piece calling on her school to divest from Israeli companies.
Two students, included in the lawsuit as anonymous plaintiffs, said deportations obstructed their ability to publish work and studies.
One journalist is listed on the Canary Mission website, which labels people as “anti-Israel” and is used by the Trump administration to “target” people for deportation, according to the lawsuit.
The second student refrained from publishing a study related to Gaza for fear of having his visa revoked.
“I’ve had reporters turn down assignments, request the removal of some of their articles, and even quit the paper because they fear deportation for being associated with speaking on political topics, even in a journalistic capacity,” wrote Stanford Daily Editor-in-Chief Greta Reich in a public statement. “The Daily is losing the voices of a significant portion of our student population.”
