Gaza First Amendment Alert (7/23/25)

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Lawsuit Brought by Academic Associations Expose Trump’s Ideological Deportation Policies 

A lawsuit brought against the Trump administration by The Knight First Amendment Institute on behalf of the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association has shed new light on the administration’s ideological deportation policy. The suit seeks to prevent the enforcement of Trump’s ideological deportation policy, in part due to its chilling impacts on academic speech. 

As part of the lawsuit, multiple officials with the Department of Homeland Security and State Department have taken the stand and testified under oath. This includes Andre Watson, the ICE official who signed requests to the State Department to revoke the legal status of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, as well as the ICE agents who oversaw the arrests of Khalil, Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Badar Khan Suri. 

ICE contains a law enforcement unit called Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). According to testimony, HSI’s Office of Intelligence drew up dossiers on potential targets. These targets were based on referrals and the dossiers included evidence on policy speech, as well as evidence taken from Canary Mission. A dossier for Öztürk  included not just information from her Canary Mission profile, but her op-ed in a student newspaper. These dossiers were then transmitted to HSI’s National Security Division, who would decide based on the dossier whether to recommend the State Department revoke a visa or green card. Watson, the head of the National Security Division, testified under oath that he never refused to refer an individual to the State Department.

Testimony also revealed the role of higher-ups in the Trump administration in pushing these cases. ICE agents testified they were told to prioritize the cases of Khalil and Öztürk and were given advanced notice that Rubio would make a legal determination against Khalil. As previously reported in the Gaza First Amendment Alert.  Stephen Miller participated in meetings, but the Trump administration has asserted executive privilege to block information about meetings of the Homeland Security Council to be entered into court records. 

Federal Judge Finds Immigration Judge Failed to Comply With Injunction Against Khalil’s Removal Proceeding

On July 17, 2025 U.S. District Judge Michael E. Farbiarz found that a June 20 order from the immigration judge in Mahmoud Khalil’s removal case should not have been issued. Farbiarz had issued a preliminary injunction blocking a provision of U.S. immigration law that allows a noncitizen to be deported if the Secretary of State signs a determination about their impact on U.S. foreign policy from being applied to Khalil. In spite of this ruling, the immigration judge issued a ruling on June 20 to proceed with Khalil’s removal from the country. 

In addition to seeking Khalil’s removal based on the foreign policy determination, the U.S. government is also claiming Khalil provided misleading information when applying for lawful permanent residence status by not mentioning that he was a member of a student club or had an internship with a United Nations agency responsible for providing aid to Palestinian refugees. 

According to the July 17 decision, the immigration judge’s June 20 order must be either completely vacated or at least amended so far as it found Khalil removable under the foreign policy determination. The judge stressed in a footnote, “The June 20 immigration court finding came down after this Court’s June 11 preliminary injunction. It should not have been made. [emphasis in original].” 

Unlike the foreign policy determination, a noncitizen found to be removable on the basis of misrepresentation may be entitled to relief from removability. Typically, the immigration judge will hold an evidentiary hearing to determine whether relief is warranted. But the immigration judge declined to hold such a hearing for Khalil on the basis that she had only found him removable on the basis of the foreign policy determination. In her June 20 finding, she for the first time sustained the misrepresentation charge and denied Khalil relief without any evidentiary hearing. Many experts have submitted testimony before the federal judge explaining that in cases similar to Khalil’s, a waiver of removability would be granted. Judge Farbiarz has found that the only likely explanation for refusing to hold the hearing was a reliance on the Rubio determination, which is forbidden by the injunction. 

Khalil’s lawyers have also filed another request for a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the misrepresentation charge. Previously, Farbiarz refused to grant their request for an injunction to the misrepresentation charge, applying it only to the foreign policy determination.  

The judge did, find, however, that the immigration judge’s ruling that Khalil should not be granted asylum did not violate the injunction. 

Court Finds Likely First Amendment Concerns With Trump’s Sanctions 

In the United States District Court of Maine, Judge Nancy Torresen has enjoined the Trump administration from applying its sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) to Matthew Smith and Akila Radhakrishnan. Both are U.S. citizens who provide information to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC.

The litigation stems from Trump’s executive order earlier this year, issued in response to the ICC’s issuing of arrest warrants for Israeli officials. The order imposed sanctions on ​​Karim Khan, the court’s chief prosecutor. It also allowed the Secretary of State to similarly sanction foreign persons who “engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute [the U.S. or its allies] without consent of that person’s country of nationality,” or who “have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to” such an effort.

As explained in the February 21, 2025 edition of the Gaza First Amendment Alert, while this order sanctions foreign persons, it had implications for the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens too. The order not only bars U.S. persons from providing goods or funds to a sanctioned party, but services are banned as well. Smith assisted the ICC in documenting crimes against humanity committed against the Rohingya people in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Radhakrishnan was documenting “gender apartheid” carried out by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Both parties ceased cooperating with the ICC in light of the sanctions imposed on Khan. 

They argued that the order violated their First Amendment rights and violated a U.S. law stating that sanctions could not be used to regulate the export of “information.” The judge ruled they were likely to prevail on their First Amendment claims. As a result, she granted a preliminary injunction. 

The government argued that the order served a compelling government interest of preventing the ICC from arresting, detaining, or prosecuting individuals from the U.S. or its allies (a clear reference to Israel) without the consent of that person’s government. 

As the judge explained, “The Executive Order broadly prohibits any speech-based services that benefit the Prosecutor, regardless of whether those beneficial services relate to an ICC investigation of the United States, Israel, or another U.S. ally. The Government does not explain how its stated interest could be undermined—or even impacted—by the Plaintiffs’ services to the OTP related to the ICC’s ongoing work in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Afghanistan.”

Based on the judge’s logic, it is unclear how she would have ruled in a case where an individual exercised their First Amendment right to provide information to the court about U.S. or Israeli war crimes. The First Amendment concerns of these sanctions have only heightened. As reported in the last Gaza First Amendment Alert, Rubio has used the Executive Order to sanction Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967. 

Chip Gibbons is the editor of the Gaza First Amendment Alert. Nathan Fuller and James Holden contributed reporting, research, and analysis.