A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that President Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists was unlawful, issuing a blistering rebuke of the administration in finding it singled out activists critical of Israel’s war in Gaza for immigration enforcement based on their protected speech. 

U.S. District Judge William Young, an appointee of former President Reagan, sided with several university associations who had argued that the administration’s policy was to revoke the visas and green cards of noncitizens critical of the war in the aim of chilling their free expression. 

The 161-page ruling at times focused on the “nature” of Trump himself, pegging him as a bully prone to “hollow bragging.” 

The judge said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with their subordinate officials and agents, worked together to “misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech.” 

“They did so in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizen pro-Palestinian individuals, pro-actively (and effectively) curbing lawful pro-Palestinian speech and intentionally denying such individuals (including the plaintiffs here) the freedom of speech that is their right,” Young continued. “Moreover, the effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day.” 

He called the case “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court.” 

The decision follows a roughly two-week trial the first major trial of Trump’s second administration over the arrests and efforts to deport foreign-born students and faculty members linked to campus demonstrations. 

Green card-holding professors at U.S. universities testified that the high-profile arrests of outspoken students, like former Columbia University pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, made them fearful and stifled their speech. 

“It became apparent to me … that my engaging in public political dissent would potentially endanger my immigration status that I risked detention and deportation for being publicly politically critical of the Trump administration,” Northwestern University philosophy professor Megan Hyska, a Canadian citizen, said during the trial.  

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had deemed several of the campus demonstrators threats to the nation’s foreign policy, invoking a statute that makes deportable any noncitizen whose “presence and activities in the United States” is thought to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”  

In a memo explaining the apparent threat posed by Khalil, Rubio cited the student’s beliefs as justification for his deportation.   

“It is stifling dissent, your honor,” Alexandra Conlon, a lawyer from Sher Tremonte representing the plaintiffs, said during closing arguments on July 21. “That’s the goal.” 

Several Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials testified about the arrests and new focus on campus demonstrators, insisting that the administration went by the book.  

Justice Department lawyers called the suggestion that the administration is targeting noncitizens based on their pro-Palestinian advocacy “silly,” contending that the evidence presented at trial demonstrated no such policy exists.  

“This policy is a product of the imagination and creative conjuring of the plaintiffs,” said department attorney William Kanellis.  

However, a senior Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) official testified that “most” names his team was directed to investigate came from Canary Mission, an anonymously run, pro-Israel online blacklist.  

The official, HSI assistant director of intelligence Peter Hatch, also said analysts working on cases involving counterterrorism, cybercrimes and global trade were reassigned to work on compiling reports about demonstrators “because of the workload.” 

Young’s ruling spent a dozen of its final pages focused on Trump himself.  

The judge quoted his own wife to say Trump “seems to be winning. He ignores everything and keeps bullying ahead,” and annotated the remark across several pages.  

A section on “retribution” detailed Trump’s attacks on law firms, higher education and the media as “necessary background to frame the problem this President has with the First Amendment.” 

And in the final paragraphs of his ruling, the judge quoted former President Reagan’s Inauguration speech, when he said, “freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.” 

Young said he’s come to believe Trump “truly understands and appreciates” the importance of Reagan’s message but draws from it a “darker, more cynical message.” 

“I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected,” the judge wrote.

He added, “Is he correct?” 

Updated at 2:26 p.m. EDT.