The Student Newspaper Suing Marco Rubio Over Targeted Deportations

President Donald Trump has has long considered both the media and higher learning as his enemies which makes college media a ripe target The arrest of R meysa zt rk over an op-ed that she co-wrote for the Tufts University campus paper proved that trainee journalists are at threat especially foreign writers who dared criticize Israel s war on Gaza But one aspirant newspaper is fighting back The Stanford Daily the independent publication covering Stanford University filed a First Amendment lawsuit suing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Protection Kristi Noem earlier this month over two tactics they ve used in targeted deportation cases What s at stake in this occurrence is whether when you re in the United States you re free to voice an opinion critical of the ruling body without fear of retaliation announced Conor Fitzpatrick an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression or FIRE a civil liberties group representing the plaintiffs It does not matter if you re a citizen here on a green card or visiting Las Vegas for the weekend you shouldn t have to fear retaliation because the regime doesn t like what you have to say Fitzpatrick declared Soon after Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by immigration agents in early March for his role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University scholar journalists and editors around the country sensed a shift That s when we saw a major uptick in calls explained Mike Hiestand senior legal counsel at the Scholar Press Law Center who manages the nonprofit s hotline Over three decades helping aspirant reporters manage censorship and First Amendment issues Hiestand had never fielded so numerous calls focused on probable immigration consequences for coverage on campus both for the journalists and their named sources zt rk s arrest just a couple weeks later sent the legal hotline into overdrive Hiestand informed The Intercept He heard from reporters editors and even political cartoonists worried their work about Israel Palestine and participant protests might make them targets too In early April the Participant Press Law Center put out an unprecedented alert with other participant journalism organizations which advised campus publications to consider taking down or revising certain stories that may now be targeted by immigration representatives ICE has weaponized lawful speech and digital footprints and has forced us all to reconsider long-standing journalism norms reads the alert The next week the Stanford Daily editors ran a letter about the chill its own staff was facing on campus Both students and faculty have been increasingly hesitant to speak to The Daily and increasingly worried about comments that have already been made on the record their letter read Specific reporters have been choosing to step away from stories in order to keep their name detached from topics that might draw unwanted attention Even authors of dated opinion pieces have expressed fear that their words might retroactively put them in danger Following the editors letter FIRE approached the Stanford Daily s editors to sue the Trump administration It s not the first time the publication has fought for freedom of the press in court In a matter brought by the Stanford Daily over a search warrant targeting its newsroom reached the Supreme Court which ruled - that the warrant was valid and did not violate the First Amendment The scholar newspaper s current suit filed with two individual plaintiffs suing under the pseudonyms Jane Doe and John Doe challenges two broad arcane legal provisions that have become Rubio s go-to tools against pupil activists and campus critics of Israel s war on Gaza The first provision which was added to the country s immigration code in grants the secretary of state sweeping authority to render noncitizens deportable if they compromise a compelling United States foreign strategy interest The second law is even broader allowing the secretary to revoke visas at any time in his discretion There are relatively minimal cases in which either statute has been the grounds for deportation particularly compared to the tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has rounded up and detained since Trump returned to the White House Related The Matter Against Mahmoud Khalil Hinges on Vague Antisemitism Claim In fact immigration scholars revealed that invoking the foreign protocol provision as the sole grounds for deportation was almost unprecedented according to a brief submitted in Khalil s ongoing court battle by more than lawyers and law professors Based on regime facts the scholars identified just cases in which the foreign procedures provision has ever been invoked and just four in the past years the greater part in recent days in during the first Trump administration At a minimum the regime s assertion of authority here is extraordinary indeed vanishingly rare the scholars wrote in their brief In Khalil s circumstance the ruling body identified only two others beside Khalil who had been targeted by Rubio under the foreign framework provision although not identified by name descriptions of the cases match Rubio s orders against Mohsen Mahdawi a Palestinian pupil at Columbia University and Badar Khan Suri a scholar at Georgetown University Oddly the authorities failed to mention the situation of Yunseo Chung another Columbia undergraduate with a green card whose deportation Rubio authorized in the very same letter as for Khalil The State Department greenlighted zt rk s detention meanwhile under the second broader provision court records show The leadership has not made any similar accounting of how multiple times Rubio and his staff have invoked his discretion to revoke visas over alleged antisemitism At one point Rubio claimed to have revoked as multiple as visas without specifying the authority under which he did so The chill is the point Fitzpatrick the FIRE attorney disclosed It doesn t take deporting thousands of noncitizens to accomplish that chill since no one wants to become the next Mahmoud Khalil or R meysa zt rk Read our complete coverage Chilling Dissent In modern months numerous courts have cast doubt on whether these two statutes can be used to target noncitizens based on their speech In Khalil s occurrence which is at present pending in a federal appellate court a district court judge in New Jersey ruled in June that the foreign guidelines provision is very likely an unconstitutional statute Similarly in May a judge in Vermont ordered zt rk s release to ameliorate the chilling effect that Ms Ozturk s arguably unconstitutional detention may have on non-citizens present in the country The executive has also appealed that order along with similar rulings that freed Mahdawi and Suri from detention and another ruling that blocked the Trump administration from detaining Chung Now the Stanford Daily is mounting a direct challenge to these two laws as deployed by the Trump administration The participant newspaper argues both provisions are unconstitutional under the First Amendment at least when used to retaliate against protected speech The Secretary of State and the President claim to possess unreviewable statutory authority to deport any lawfully present noncitizen for speech the executive deems anti-American or anti-Israel They are wrong reads their complaint filed August The First Amendment cements America s promise that the administration may not subject a speaker to disfavored cure because those in power do not like his or her message Julia Rose Kraut a legal historian who has written about the history of ideological deportation in the U S communicated The Intercept that Congress never meant for the foreign agenda provision to be used as a tool to suppress freedom of expression and association Related The Legal Argument That Could Set Mahmoud Khalil Free Members of Congress intended for the foreign strategy provision to be used in exceptional circumstances and only sparingly diligently and narrowly to exclude or deport specific individuals who would have a clear negative impact on United States foreign protocol Kraut revealed citing changes signed into law after the Cold War What this development is seeking to establish is that political branches authority over immigration does not supersede the Bill of Rights FIRE s Fitzpatrick noted Briefing in the matter is ongoing and a hearing is scheduled for October It s gratifying to see a aspirant newspaper upholding free speech at a time when multiple institutions are bending the knee noted Shirin Sinnar a law professor at Stanford in an emailed message Countless students are afraid to protest the Trump administration s actions not only because of the deportations but because their own universities restricted speech and harshly disciplined protestors I hope their courage inspires others to act The post The Aspirant Newspaper Suing Marco Rubio Over Targeted Deportations appeared first on The Intercept