US Scholars Sue Trump over Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Activists
New York (Quds News Network)- The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a lawsuit on Saturday challenging the Trump administration’s actions that threaten to deport or jail those who advocate for Palestinian rights.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, seeks a nationwide temporary restraining order to block enforcement of two executive orders signed by U.S. President Donald Trumpin the first month of his term.
It comes after the detention of a Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old permanent U.S. resident of Palestinian descent, whose arrest by ICE agents over his pro-Palestine activism at campus sparked protests this month.
Justice Department lawyers have argued that the U.S. government is seeking Khalil’s removal because Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reasonable grounds to believe his activities or presence in the country could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Rubio on Friday said the United States will likely revoke visas of more students in the coming days.
Trump vowed to deport activists who took part in protests on U.S. college campuses against Israel’s 15-month assault on Gaza.
The ADC lawsuit was filed on behalf of two graduate students and a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who say their activism and support of the Palestinian people “has put them at serious risk of political persecution.”
“This lawsuit is a necessary step to preserve our most fundamental constitutional protections. The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech and expression to all persons within the United States, without exception,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the ADC.
Chris Godshall-Bennett, the group’s legal director, said the litigation seeks immediate and long-term relief “to protect international students from any unconstitutional overreach that stifles free expression and deters them from fully engaging in academic and public discourse.”
The lawsuit centers on three Cornell University plaintiffs: a British-Gambian national and PhD student with a student visa; a U.S. citizen PhD student working on plant science; and a U.S. citizen novelist, poet, and professor in the Department of Literatures in English.
“The US government claims to be zealous about free speech – except when it comes to Palestine,” Momodou Taal, the British Gambian citizen, said in a statement.
“We’ve been here before: McCarthyism to Civil Rights to Vietnam, times when this country has deviated from its stated commitments to free speech. This is another generational moment, another hour of reckoning. Why is there a Palestine exception?”
The first of the executive orders, numbered 1416, directs the government to step up immigration screening to prevent the entry of individuals who may pose a “threat” to the US, while the second, numbered 14188, calls for the use of all available tools “to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence”.
