\n<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump<\/span> has has long considered both the media and higher education as his enemies \u2014 which makes college media a ripe target. The arrest of R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk over an op-ed<\/a> that she co-wrote for the Tufts University campus paper proved that student journalists are at risk, especially foreign writers who dared criticize Israel\u2019s war on Gaza.<\/p>\n But one student newspaper is fighting back.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Stanford Daily \u2014\u00a0the independent publication covering Stanford University \u2014 filed a First Amendment lawsuit<\/a> suing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem earlier this month over two tactics they\u2019ve used in targeted deportation cases.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s at stake in this case is whether, when you\u2019re in the United States, you\u2019re free to voice an opinion critical of the government without fear of retaliation,\u201d said Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, a civil liberties group representing the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does not matter if you\u2019re a citizen, here on a green card, or visiting Las Vegas for the weekend \u2014 you shouldn\u2019t have to fear retaliation because the government doesn\u2019t like what you have to say,\u201d Fitzpatrick said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Soon after Mahmoud<\/span> Khalil was arrested by immigration agents in early March for his role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, student journalists and editors around the country sensed a shift.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s when we saw a significant uptick in calls,\u201d said Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, who manages the nonprofit\u2019s hotline.<\/p>\n Over three decades helping student reporters navigate censorship and First Amendment issues, Hiestand had never fielded so many calls focused on potential immigration consequences for coverage on campus, both for the journalists and their named sources.<\/p>\n \u00d6zt\u00fcrk\u2019s arrest just a couple weeks later sent the legal hotline \u201cinto overdrive,\u201d Hiestand told The Intercept. He heard from reporters, editors, and even political cartoonists worried their work about Israel, Palestine, and student protests might make them targets too.<\/p>\n In early April, the Student Press Law Center put out an unprecedented alert<\/a> with other student journalism organizations, which advised campus publications to consider taking down or revising \u201ccertain stories that may now be targeted by immigration officials.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cICE has weaponized lawful speech and digital footprints and has forced us all to reconsider long-standing journalism norms,\u201d reads the alert.<\/p>\n The next week, the Stanford Daily editors <\/a>ran a letter<\/a> about the chill its own staff was facing on campus.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth students and faculty have been increasingly hesitant to speak to The Daily and increasingly worried about comments that have already been made on the record,\u201d their letter read. \u201cSome reporters have been choosing to step away from stories in order to keep their name detached from topics that might draw unwanted attention. Even authors of dated opinion pieces have expressed fear that their words might retroactively put them in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n Following the editors\u2019 letter, FIRE approached the Stanford Daily\u2019s editors to sue the Trump administration. It\u2019s not the first time the publication has fought for freedom of the press in court. In 1978, a case brought by the Stanford Daily over a search warrant targeting its newsroom reached the Supreme Court<\/a>, which ruled 5-3 that the warrant was valid and did not violate the First Amendment.<\/p>\n The student newspaper\u2019s current suit \u2014 filed with two individual plaintiffs suing under the pseudonyms Jane Doe and John Doe \u2014 challenges two broad, arcane legal provisions that have become Rubio\u2019s go-to tools against student activists and campus critics of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza.<\/p>\n The first provision<\/a>, which was added to the country\u2019s immigration code in 1990, grants the secretary of state sweeping authority to render noncitizens deportable if they \u201ccompromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.\u201d The second law<\/a> is even broader, allowing the secretary to revoke visas \u201cat any time, in his discretion.\u201d<\/p>\n There are relatively few cases in which either statute has been the grounds for deportation, particularly compared to the tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has rounded up and detained since Trump returned to the White House. \u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, immigration scholars found that invoking the foreign policy provision as the sole grounds for deportation was \u201calmost unprecedented,\u201d according to a brief<\/a> submitted in Khalil\u2019s ongoing court battle by more than 150 lawyers and law professors. Based on government data, the scholars identified just 15 cases in which the foreign policy provision has ever been invoked, and just four in the past 25 years \u2014 most recently in 2018, during the first Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a minimum, the government\u2019s assertion of authority here is extraordinary \u2014 indeed, vanishingly rare,\u201d the scholars wrote in their brief.<\/p>\n In Khalil\u2019s case, the government identified<\/a> only two others beside Khalil who had been targeted by Rubio under the \u201cforeign policy\u201d provision: although not identified by name, descriptions of the cases match Rubio\u2019s orders against Mohsen Mahdawi<\/a>, a Palestinian student at Columbia University, and Badar Khan Suri, a scholar at Georgetown University. Oddly, the government failed to mention the case of Yunseo Chung, another Columbia undergraduate with a green card<\/a>, whose deportation Rubio authorized in the very same letter as for Khalil.<\/p>\n The State Department greenlighted \u00d6zt\u00fcrk\u2019s detention, meanwhile, under the second, broader provision, court records show. The government has not made any similar accounting of how many times Rubio and his staff have invoked his \u201cdiscretion\u201d to revoke visas over alleged antisemitism. At one point Rubio claimed to have revoked as many as 300 visas<\/a>, without specifying the authority under which he did so.<\/p>\n \u201cThe chill is the point,\u201d Fitzpatrick, the FIRE attorney, said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t take deporting thousands of noncitizens to accomplish that chill,\u201d since no one wants to become \u201cthe next Mahmoud Khalil or R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n