US court rules Trump visa revocations over Palestine advocacy unconstitutional

A federal judge in San Jose ruled that the Trump administration's use of immigration laws to revoke visas and deport foreign students for expressing pro-Palestinian views or criticizing Israel violates the First Amendment. U.S. District Judge Noel Wise said targeting noncitizens for their speech was unconstitutional and warned that such policies could push members of the community toward self-censorship to avoid possible government retaliation. The decision focuses on the administration's practice since March 2025 of revoking visas and detaining foreign nationals who took part in pro-Palestinian activity on U.S. campuses, including Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the Stanford Daily, a student newspaper that includes visa-holding student journalists, over concerns that reporting on pro-Palestinian campus activism could be restricted. Earlier, a federal judge in Boston had reached the same conclusion, finding the administration's visa revocations, detentions and deportations of foreign students and scholars over pro-Palestinian activity unconstitutional.