As a rule, there are a handful of triggers for deportation under the Trump administration. These have been evident for the past 20 or so months: Those who entered the country illegally, who overstayed a visa, who committed a criminal offense or whose temporary protected status has been revoked should expect to be targeted by federal immigration officials.

Last year, however, Secretary of State Marco Rubio decided to add a new trigger: Those who engage in political speech the administration disagrees with can also be deported.

This policy faced an important legal test, and predictably, it failed. Politico reported:

A federal judge on Friday declared that the Trump administration’s efforts to deport noncitizens for political speech run counter to the Constitution’s First and Fifth Amendments, the latest legal rebuke of the White House’s expansive immigration agenda.

Northern District of California Judge Noel Wise, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, sided with the Stanford Daily, which sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio, arguing that his use of the Immigration and Nationality Act to deport noncitizen students had foreign students refraining from writing opinion pieces critical of the administration.

“In the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people,” Wise wrote in her opinion. “It is not the government’s to take.”

One aspect of this dispute is Rubio’s candidness about the approach. Just two months into the Florida Republican’s tenure, after federal agents snatched Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk off a public street and put her in an unmarked van, Rubio defended what transpired in a striking way.

“We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campus,” the secretary of state said, effectively admitting that Ozturk was targeted for having written a pro-Palestinian op-ed.

Earlier this year, The New York Times reported on unsealed internal government documents that showed Rubio “personally approved the deportation of five student activists last year after receiving memos largely describing their participation in pro-Palestinian protests and their writings about the war in Gaza.”

The article added that the administration’s documents “show that officials privately anticipated the possibility that the deportations might not hold up in court because much of the conduct highlighted could be seen as protected speech.”

We now know they were right to be concerned.

Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which sued Rubio on behalf of the Stanford Daily, said in response to the ruling, “In America, free speech doesn’t just belong to the people who say things the government agrees with.”

Nevertheless, it’s a safe bet the administration will appeal Friday’s ruling. Watch this space.

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