‘unconstitutional Conspiracy’: Judge Slams Trump Administration Over Targeted Deportations

A federal judge handling a lawsuit over the deportation of pro-Palestinian activists excoriated top administration officials, including President Donald Trump, for trampling on the First Amendment and for what the judge described as a fearful approach to freedom.

“There was no policy here,” said U.S. District Judge William Young, an 85-year-old Reagan appointee who has been on the federal bench in Boston for 40 years. “What happened here is an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people."

During a hearing on the suit Thursday, Young tore into Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for pursuing a targeted deportation campaign that Young said was at odds with the country’s core values.

“I find it breathtaking that I have been compelled on the evidence to find the conduct of such high-level officers of our government — cabinet secretaries — conspired to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States,” Young said. “These cabinet secretaries have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution."

Young’s comments came as he prepares to issue what he described as a steep sanction against the Trump administration for seeking to “chill” the free speech of pro-Palestinian activists targeted for arrest and removal weeks after Trump took office — including Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Madhawi, as well as Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk and Georgetown University academic Badar Khan Suri.

Young ruled against the administration’s policy in September after a two-week trial, and held Thursday’s hearing to hash out a “remedy” for the violations. The judge said he plans to issue a ruling that will grant the plaintiffs a “conclusive presumption” that future changes to their immigration status amount to retaliation for their suit. The ruling will put the onus on the government to prove that officials have good cause before moving forward with any planned changes to group members’ immigration status, the judge said.

Young used extraordinarily stark language during the hearing, describing Trump as an “authoritarian” while insisting that he was choosing the term carefully, rather than simply using a “pejorative.” The judge also compared the Trump administration’s broader mass-deportation campaign to historic efforts to return formerly enslaved people to their owners under the Fugitive Slave Act, noting an infamous episode in Boston history when a U.S. marshal was killed near Young’s courthouse as he guarded a man named Anthony Burns who escaped slavery in Virginia.

The judge has been tangling with Trump and the administration in a series of high profile lawsuits that have landed in his Boston courthouse since last year. He has similarly accused the administration of discriminatory policies against minorities and LGBTQ Americans. Still, Young said that the case of targeted deportations against activists is by far the most important in his lengthy career.

The judge found the president and his aides targeted the members of the group for their First Amendment-protected views and speech, guided by an anonymously run private website targeting Palestinian students in the United States.

“I've asked myself why — how did this happen? How could our own government, the highest officials in our government, seek to infringe the rights of people lawfully here in the United States? And I’ve come to believe that there’s a concept of freedom here that I don’t understand,” the judge continued. “The record in this case convinces me that these high officials, and I include the president of the United States, have a fearful view of freedom.”

In contrast, Young praised the homeland security officials who testified in his courtroom about their efforts to carry out their responsibilities to keep the country safe — and said their skills were misused by their leaders.

“These professionals were taken off anti-terrorist investigations. They were taken off human trafficking investigations all to look up … what dirt they could find on this group that some private agency, at the very highest levels of the DHS decided — that’s the best use of those people,” Young said. “If ever you want chapter and verse about how the government can be weaponized against a disfavored group, that’s the record of it.”

The Justice Department seemed to frustrate Young on Thursday by arguing he is powerless to enforce his ruling that the administration’s targeted deportations were unconstitutional.

“All issues related to the initiation of removal proceedings … must be channeled into immigration court,” DOJ attorney Paul Stone said. “There isn’t any remedy that the court can offer.”

“You’re telling me there is no remedy?” an astonished Young replied.

“That’s what the statutes require,” Stone said.

Just seconds into his presentation, Stone cited an appeals court ruling earlier on Thursday that backed the government in the case brought by Columbia University protester Khalil challenging his arrest and attempted deportation. The Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, whose rulings are not binding on Young, found Congress has forbidden district court judges from issuing orders that impact deportation proceedings.

As the hearing concluded, Young added that he plans to make public much of the yet-undisclosed evidence in the case, rejecting the Trump administration’s arguments to seal the documents. The judge plans to issue his formal ruling next week.