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A US judge struck down Trump's visa purge of pro-Palestinian students
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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A federal judge in California has ruled that the legal machinery the Trump administration used to strip visas from foreign students who criticised Israel is unconstitutional.
The ruling came on Friday from Judge Noël Wise of the US District Court in San Jose, in a case brought by The Stanford Daily, Stanford University's student newspaper, whose writers hold student visas. It runs to ninety pages.
Judge Wise found that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security violated the First and Fifth Amendments when they revoked visas, detained students and moved to deport them over pro-Palestinian speech. When a person's words are the reason for the revocation, she held, the government is singling out that speech for disfavoured treatment because of its viewpoint.
Two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act were at issue: the secretary of state's power to declare a noncitizen deportable whose presence is said to compromise a compelling foreign policy interest, and the discretionary power to revoke a visa.
In the United States, free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy's fragility. It is evidence of its strength.
Judge Noël Wise, US District Court, San Jose, 28 August 2026
What the case was about#
The policy the ruling addresses began in March 2025 with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and negotiator for the student encampment there, and widened into visa revocations across American campuses.
The Stanford Daily's argument was about journalism rather than protest. Its staff said the enforcement campaign had already changed what they were willing to write about Gaza and about demonstrations on their own campus — self-censorship as the measurable harm.
Judge Wise's decision follows a similar finding last year by Judge William Young in Boston, who held that the administration had adopted an unconstitutional policy of revoking visas and deporting foreign students and faculty engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy.
The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately comment. For Palestinian students and academics in the United States, the practical question is what the government does next, and appeal is available to it.
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