BOSTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – A federal judge said on Thursday he would issue an order designed to prevent President Donald Trump’s administration from exacting “retribution” against academics who challenged its arresting, detaining and deporting non-citizen, pro-Palestinian activists on U.S. college campuses.
U.S. District Judge William Young spoke at a hearing in Boston federal court, after finding in September that the U.S. departments of State and Homeland Security violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by chilling free speech by the non-citizen academics on college campuses.
Young, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan and has criticized Trump’s other actions in the past, called the administration’s actions “appalling,” and said it had “a fearful approach to freedom.”
[American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association] had sought an order blocking the administration’s practices nationally. Young called their proposal “overbroad” but a “sanction” was needed to remedy what he concluded was a conspiracy by top officials under Trump.
“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.”
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