Think Immigration: Saving America – One Immigrant at a Time

On September 30th, Judge William Young of the District Court of Massachusetts provided a remarkable example of what can only be described as a singular profile in courage when he struck down the Administration’s deportation of foreign students and academics for their political speech. The case – American Association of University Professors v. Marco Rubio, found unequivocally that the government violated the First Amendment by targeting (rather aggressively and with little aforethought) non-citizens based solely on their point of view.

Picture the young student protagonist, bespectacled Rümeysa Öztürk, on a cloudy spring afternoon in Somerville, Massachusetts, on her way to an iftar dinner, the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast. She was probably looking forward to an evening with friends, a shared meal, some form of bonding with her fellow Muslims in America. The kind of peculiar mixture of belonging and non-belonging that is emblematic of the new-immigrant experience.

She never made it!

She was instead “snatched” by masked federal ICE agents and spent the next six weeks at an ICE processing facility in Basile, Louisiana. Fast forward five months later and the matter winds up in a federal courtroom in Boston.

Judge Young’s decision, whatever its legal fate, performs an essential function – that of calling this action what it is – the act of arresting students (foreign or otherwise) and deporting them is “ideological deportation” and “squalid and dishonorable.” It says that universities that remain passive while their students are arrested, detained, and deported have failed their mission. It says fundamentally, America is not America if it turns away from protecting fundamental freedoms. These are not legal conclusions but moral ones. However, some truths are self-evident and need not be enshrined in legal doctrine to be relevant. In a postscript, the Judge further wrote: “…It is here, and in courthouses just like this one, both state and federal, spread throughout our land that our Constitution is most vibrantly alive, for it is well said that "Where a jury sits, there burns the lamp of liberty."

The Honorable William G. Young – a Reagan appointee will now and forever be lionized as a curious champion for immigrant rights, or a gladiator of sorts for first amendment protections. As the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts once wrote in a 1983 memo, “Federal judges are peculiar creatures, who are given lifetime tenure, insulated from political pressure, and who are empowered to override the decisions of the elected branches.” That insulation can sometimes – not always – lead to an epiphany and explains why the founding fathers may have believed an independent judiciary was paramount.

Judge Young decided to tag on a scan of a handwritten note to his decision. The note tauntingly reads, “Trump has pardons and tanks…What do you have?” Most judges would have ignored this or perhaps turned it over to the U.S. Marshals. Young chose to answer: “Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States – you and me – have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works out in a specific case −.”

What follows is not just a legal opinion but something that is very likely to be read, reread and cited for years to come – a federal judge’s attempt to speak to future generations of Americans likely to confront this issue over and over again. More importantly though, he sought to answer not just the legal question presented in the lawsuit, but the abiding moral question. The legal question was whether this administration could deport foreign students and faculty for their political speech. The moral question was whether America would remain the bastion of democracy it claims to be if it did.

The economic implications of what is happening here will undoubtedly impact future learning. American universities depend heavily on foreign students, who contributed $44 billion to the economy during the 2023-2024 academic year. International students and scholars comprise more than 40% of the Nobel Prize winners from American universities since 2000. Policies that deter foreign students and academics from engaging in campus discourse could damage American higher education’s competitive advantage.

The trial which was held over nine days in July 2025 revealed the administration’s dragnet. Peter Hatch, who led the Tiger Team, testified that his unit had reassigned analysts from counterterrorism, trade, and cybercrime to investigate social media posts by college students. The standard for investigation was remarkably broad: any criticism of Israel that could be construed as antisemitic, with “antisemitic” defined to include opposing Zionism or supporting Palestinian rights.

The government’s defense was revealing. Justice Department lawyers argued that immigration benefits – including student visas – are privileges that can be conditioned on political neutrality. Foreign nationals, they suggested, are guests who should avoid speaking, writing or expressing their opinions on controversial topics that affect foreign policy. If they want to engage in political speech, they should do so in their own countries. This argument has a logic that appeals to certain sections who support this administration’s sweeping attempts to bring immigration “under control” and support national sovereignty as long as it is taken to mean that it applies to a certain class. These individuals are those who ask, why should America tolerate foreign critics? Why should visa holders enjoy the same rights as citizens? The answer, as Judge Young opined, goes to the heart of what America claims to be. In other words, if we believe in free speech as a principle rather than a privilege, why should it matter where the speaker was born? “We are not, and must not become,” Young wrote, “a nation that imprisons and deports people because we are afraid of what they have to tell us.”

Reading the opinion, I am struck by how it functions as both a legal document and sermon on the Constitution and founding values of this nation. Judge Young appears to be targeting multiple audiences: the appeals court that will review his decision, the Supreme Court that may ultimately decide the case, the universities that failed their students and communities, and perhaps most importantly posterity that will either uphold the core values that made up this great nation, or forever take the “fork in the road.” The more I read, the more I see recurring themes in our history of how this nation has treated immigrants. During every generation, we have seen immigrants who are different – Irish Catholics, Chinese laborers, Eastern European Jews, Japanese Americans, Muslim Americans and more recently H-1B Nonimmigrants from India. And in every generation, we’re tempted to use the law as a weapon against them. Thankfully, we have been saved by those who have not forgotten who we are and by those willing to stand up and speak loudly in order to be heard above the deafening rhetoric.

What makes this current situation particularly bitter is that it targets people who came here believing in an America that led the world into thinking that free expression and association are not a privilege but a fundamental human right. Rümeysa was admitted by a very distinguished American University into a doctoral program. Far from working surreptitiously, she co-wrote an opinion piece in a student newspaper. The University came out in support of her. But alas, her misplaced faith in American values made her the author of her own misfortune.

In the end, what troubles me most is not whether we will live through this experience, because we will. Instead, what troubles me is that in every generation, we’re tested on our commitment to stand by the founding principles of this nation and in every generation most of us fail that test. And yet, in every generation, a few people – a judge here, a lawyer there, an institution that remembers its true mission – stand and say no. Judge Young has had his moment and has added his voice to those of American heroes who have defended our freedoms. He insisted in those one hundred and sixty-one pages that our principles matter more than our panic, that our Constitution protects even those we fear and that the remedy for speech we hate is more dialogue and not silence, enforced or otherwise.

Thank God we have judges who can still stand up and deliver judgements like this and who have the courage to say what America requires most, even when most Americans don’t want to hear it.

Especially when Americans don’t want to hear it.