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Published : 16 Jan 2026, 10:31 AM
Describing President Donald Trump as an "authoritarian," a federal judge said on Thursday he will issue an order aimed at protecting academics who challenged the arrest and deportation of non-citizen, pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses.
At a hearing in Boston, US District Judge William Young outlined an order he will issue in a week that seeks to prevent the administration from changing the immigration status of any academics in the case who are themselves non-citizens.
Any such change by the administration would be presumed to "be in retribution for their participation in this lawsuit," the judge said. Young said he would then require the government to prove in court it was seeking to deport them for "appropriate" reasons.
In a September ruling that sharply criticised Trump's actions, the judge concluded the departments of State and Homeland Security violated the US Constitution's First Amendment by chilling the free speech of non-citizen academics at universities nationally.
"The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries, and ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment," Young said.
Young, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, called the administration's abridgment of First Amendment rights "appalling," and said top officials under Trump had adopted "a fearful approach to freedom."
"We cast around the word 'authoritarian,'" Young said. "I don't, in this context, treat that in a pejorative sense, and I use it carefully, but it's fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone, everyone in Article II is going to toe the line absolutely."
Article II is the part of the Constitution governing the executive branch.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly in a statement called it "bizarre that this judge is broadcasting his intent to engage in left-wing activism against the democratically-elected president of the United States." The administration previously said it would appeal Young's September decision.
The judge said he would limit the reach of his order to members of academic associations including the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association that challenged the administration's actions.
Those groups had sought an order blocking the administration's practices nationally, but Young said that was "overbroad."
The lawsuit was filed last year after immigration authorities in March arrested recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, the first target of Trump's effort to deport non-citizen students with pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel views.
The Homeland Security Department, in announcing Khalil's arrest, cited executive orders Trump signed in January 2025 directing federal agencies to "vigorously" combat antisemitism after college campus protests over Israel's war in Gaza.
Since then, the administration has canceled the visas of other students and scholars and arrested several, including Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was taken into custody in Massachusetts after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school's response to the Gaza war.
Both have since been released from immigration custody at the direction of federal judges hearing challenges to their detention. A federal appeals court on Thursday overturned the ruling in Khalil's case, opening the door to his eventual re-detention. He plans to appeal.
