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Stanford University Student Newspaper has sued the Trump administration and argues that the threat of deporting foreign students to oppose Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza is chilling free speech.
The threat hampers the ability to cover campus demonstrations and have protesters talk about the record, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Northern California.
Some Stanford daily writers, a domestic foreigner on a student visa, have been tasked with writing about their anxiety in the Middle East, as they feared they would be deported. The writer also asked the paper to remove previously published stories from its website, citing the same concerns, the lawsuit says.
“In the United States, no one should be afraid to defeat a midnight night in order to express a false opinion,” a newspaper lawyer wrote in the complaint.
The lawsuit denies Trump administration officials, particularly Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Christine Noem.
“If federal law clashes with First Amendment rights,” a newspaper lawyer wrote, “The Constitution wins.”
Homeland Security spokesman Tricia McLaughlin scoffed the lawsuit and called it “baseless.”
“The rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers have no room for the US. We have no obligation to acknowledge them or stay here,” she said in a statement.
The lawsuit filed by the 133-year-old student newspaper rather than the university itself is the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter battle between Trump and many elite universities in the country. The president has revealed that he sees Top School as a breeding ground for liberal ideology and a breeding ground for anti-American sentiment.
His weapon of choice is to threaten to withhold billions of federal research grants from agencies that refuse to adopt policies on issues such as diversity, trans rights, and Israel.
Critics have called Trump’s campaign an attack on academic freedom, but several Ivy League schools, including the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Brown, have recently cut deals with the Trump administration to limit the damage, fearing major budget cuts.
Stanford announced this week that hundreds of employees will be forced to fire as a result of cuts in research funding and federal tax law changes.
The Stanford Daily lawsuit focuses on two unnamed students, John and Jane Doe. John and Jane Doe began self-censorship out of grounded fears that the paper’s lawyers would be revoked and deported.
Rubio argues that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 allows the Secretary of State to revoke the legal status of non-citizens.
Rubio used that interpretation to justify the March arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal US resident and pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University, who was detained in Louisiana prison before a federal judge ordered his release.
The complaint cites the case of two other foreign students in Colombia. One was arrested in Colombia and one was arrested for attending a Palestinian campus demonstration.
At Stanford, the plaintiff, known as Jane Daw, was a member of the Palestinian Justice Group Student. She has released an online commentary accusing Israel of committing genocide and perpetuating apartheid, according to the lawsuit. She also used the slogan “From the river to the ocean, Palestine will be free.”
Referring to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, including Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the slogan is seen as a call for freedom and self-determination by the Palestinians. To many Israelis, it sounds like their call for total destruction.
As a result, DOE’s profile appeared on Canary Mission, a pro-Israel website that says creators are dedicated to “hatred towards America, Israel and Jews.” Homeland Security officials are permitted to consult their website profiles (most of the students and faculty members of elite universities) for information about people worthy of the investigation.
As a result, since March, Jane Doe has deleted her social media accounts and “will refrain from making public and speaking out about her true opinions on Palestine and Israel,” the lawsuit alleges.
John Doe took part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration, denounced Israel for genocide and chanted “from the river to the sea.” However, after the Trump administration began targeting protesters on campus for deportation, he “resisted from publishing research that includes criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza,” according to the lawsuit.
Unlike Jane Doe, John resumed public criticism of Israel despite the threat of deportation, according to the lawsuit.
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