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Trump Administration Sued Over Policy of Deporting Foreign Pro-Hamas Agitators
US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attend a cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington, DC, US, March 24, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and three of its local chapters have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to halt deportation proceedings involving expatriate pro-Hamas activists enrolled in American institutions of higher education, arguing that the allegedly seditious contents of their speech are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Filed on Tuesday in a Massachusetts federal court, the legal complaint comes several weeks after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) high-profile arrest and detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University alumnus who was an architect of the Hamilton Hall building takeover and other disturbances in the New York City area this semester. Similar action has since been taken against others, including Cornell University graduate student Momodou Taal, a dual citizen of Gambia and the United Kingdom, and Columbia University student Yunseo Chung, a noncitizen legal resident from South Korea.
In each case, a federal judge has blocked ICE from sending the students to their home countries. Most recently, a Manhattan judge ruled on Tuesday that the federal government cannot hold Yunseo Chung in detention while it processes her case.
President Donald Trump initiated the removal of pro-Hamas aliens living in the US through a January executive order which called for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” A major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction on college campuses. Trump has also said that foreign students who hold demonstrations in support of Hamas “will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.”
The AAUP and its chapters at Harvard University, Rutgers University, and New York University, along with the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), argued in court documents that the Trump administration’s “policy has created a climate of repression and fear,” charging that ICE is “terrorizing students and faculty for their exercise of First Amendment rights in the past, intimidating them from exercising those rights now, and silencing political viewpoints that the government disfavors.”
The complaint continued, “The ideological-deportation policy violates the First Amendment because it entails the arrest, detention, and deportation of noncitizen students and faculty on the basis of, or in retaliation for, their political viewpoints; because it burdens the rights of plaintiffs and their US citizen members to hear from, and associate with, those noncitizen students and faculty; and because the policy is not narrowly tailored to any compelling government interest.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, pro-Hamas activists have, since the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, allegedly violated the civil rights of Jewish students, penned extremist manifestos calling for revolutionary violence and overthrowing the government, and contributed to the spread of anti-Western beliefs.
Additionally, pro-Hamas activists have perpetrated gang assaults, threatened to commit mass murders of Jewish college students, and vandalized private property, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Recently, a lawsuit, first reported by the The Free Press, alleged that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the principal organizer of pro-Hamas activities on US campuses, received advanced knowledge of the Oct. 7 massacre, suggesting a level of coordination between US-based anti-Zionists and jihadist terrorist groups that could pose a danger to national security.
Trump has previously defended the policy of removing pro-Hamas activists from the US, most notably after it was first implemented with Khalil’s arrest on March 8.
“This is the first of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, antisemitism, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Many are not students; they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Trump went on to argue that the presence of those who support terrorism on US soil undermines American national security interests, adding that he expects colleges and universities to comply with his executive order.
The policy has many detractors, such as AAUP president Todd Wolfson, who said in a statement issued on Monday that it undermines civil liberties and may one day target “those who teach the history of slavery or who provide gender-affirming health care or who research climate change or who counsel students about their reproductive choices.”
Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner on Wednesday that the administration’s actions are legal and safeguard US interests.
“The Trump administration’s new policy of deporting pro-Hamas demonstrators who are not citizens is an important step toward addressing problems related to Hamas in America,” he explained in a statement. “The Immigration and Naturalization Act clearly gives the Secretary of State the authority to deport aliens on a variety of grounds, including endangering public safety and national security.”
Joffe added that the expatriates selected for deportation violated the conditions of their residency in the US by “giving material support to a designated terrorist group (be it Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis)” and “organizing demonstrations, which have included violence and the destruction of property.” In arguing his position, he pointed to the case of Brown University physician Rasha Alawieh, whom the federal government deported to Lebanon after learning that she had attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, who was the leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
“Overall, however, due to the Trump administration’s haphazard messaging, the evidence showing the threats to public safety and national security has been overshadowed by allegations that the deportation policy is an effort to quash free speech and chill public discourse. The terrorist connections and revolutionary motivations of groups such as Columbia University Apartheid Divest and Within Our Lifetime have similarly been ignored by most media. So, too, has the role of their various funders and amplifiers, including left-wing American foundations [and] the Chinese Communist Party” Joffe continued. “The administration’s communications skills need to improve significantly on these issues to provide more detailed information on bad actors, their motivations and backers, and not simply superficialities that stir outrage.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
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