Stanford Daily sues Trump administration, citing threats to free speech

Stanford University’s student newspaper is suing the Trump administration, claiming the threat to deport foreign students for speaking out against Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza is chilling free speech.

That threat is hampering the paper’s ability to cover campus demonstrations and to get protesters to speak on the record, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Northern California.

Some Stanford Daily writers, who are foreigners in the country on student visas, have even turned down assignments to write about unrest in the Middle East because they’re afraid they’ll be deported. Writers have also asked the paper to remove previously published stories from its website, citing the same concerns, the lawsuit says.

“In the United States of America, no one should fear a midnight knock on the door for voicing the wrong opinion,” the newspaper’s lawyers wrote in their complaint.

The suit accuses Trump administration officials, specifically Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristin Noem, of placing their statutory authority to deport a foreign visa holder whose beliefs they deem un-American ahead of the constitutional right — guaranteed by the 1st Amendment— to free speech.

“When a federal statute collides with First Amendment rights,” the newspaper’s lawyers wrote, “the Constitution prevails.”

Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, scoffed at the lawsuit, calling it “baseless.”

“There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here,” she said in a statement.

The lawsuit — which was filed by the 133-year-old student newspaper, not by the university itself — is the most recent salvo in an increasingly bitter fight between Trump and many of the nation’s elite universities. The president has made clear he sees top schools as hotbeds of liberal ideology and breeding grounds for anti-American sentiment.

His weapon of choice is to threaten to withhold billions of dollars in federal research grants from institutions that refuse to adopt policies on issues such as diversity, transgender rights and Israel that fall in line with his Make America Great Again ideology.

Critics call Trump’s campaign an attack on academic freedom, but fearing massive budget cuts, several Ivy League schools — including the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Brown — have recently cut deals with the Trump administration in an attempt to limit the damage.

Stanford announced this week that it will be forced to lay off hundreds of employees as a result of cuts to research funding and changes to federal tax laws.

The Stanford Daily’s lawsuit focuses on two unnamed students, John and Jane Doe, who the paper’s lawyers say began self-censoring out of a well-founded fear of having their visas revoked and being deported.

Rubio has claimed that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 allows the secretary of State to revoke a noncitizen’s legal status if it is decided the person’s actions or statements “compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.”

Rubio used that interpretation to justify the March arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University who was held in a Louisiana jail before a federal judge ordered his release.

The complaint cites the cases of two other foreign students — one at Columbia and one at Tufts — who were arrested for participating in pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations.

At Stanford, the plaintiff referred to as Jane Doe was a member of the group Students for Justice in Palestine. She has published online commentary accusing Israel of committing genocide and perpetuating apartheid, according to the lawsuit. She has also used the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which has become a flash point in the Israel-Gaza debate.

Referencing the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — which includes Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — the slogan is viewed as a call for freedom and self-determination by Palestinians. To many Israelis, it sounds like a call for their total destruction.

As a result, Doe’s profile appeared on the Canary Mission, a pro-Israel website that creators say is devoted to outing “hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews.” Department of Homeland Security officials have acknowledged they consult the website’s profiles — most of which are of students and faculty at elite universities — for information on people worthy of investigation.

As a result, since March, Jane Doe has deleted her social media accounts and has “refrained from publishing and voicing her true opinions regarding Palestine and Israel,” the lawsuit claims.

John Doe has participated in pro-Palestine demonstrations, has accused Israel of genocide and chanted, “From the river to the sea.” But after the Trump administration started targeting campus demonstrators for deportation, he “refrained from publishing a study containing criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza,” according to the lawsuit.

Unlike Jane Doe, John has since resumed public criticism of Israel despite the threat of deportation, according to the lawsuit.