Stanford’s student newspaper sues Trump administration over use of immigration law to target pro-Palestinian students

A cyclist rides their bicycle on the Stanford University campus on March 28 in Stanford, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/File via CNN Newsource)

Stanford University’s student-run newspaper sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over its decision to use part of a federal immigration law to target and deport pro-Palestinian activists, arguing the government’s effort has impermissibly chilled students’ First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit, filed at a federal court in California, represents the latest legal challenge to two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that have been key to the U.S. State and Homeland Security Departments’ so-called ideological deportation policy. In several other cases brought around the country, judges have also been asked to weigh the constitutionality of the INA provisions and the administration’s policy around them.

The California case was brought by the organization that publishes The Stanford Daily and two noncitizen former college students who fear their pro-Palestinian views or advocacy could put them at risk of being deported. Attorneys for the newspaper said in the lawsuit that international students on staff are turning down assignments related to the war in Gaza or “seeking removal of their previous articles about it.”

“Since the Trump administration began targeting lawfully present noncitizens for deportation based on protected speech in March 2025, lawfully present noncitizen students working at and contributing to Stanford Daily have self-censored expression for fear of visa revocation, arrest, detention, and deportation,” attorneys from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which brought the new case, wrote in court papers.

One of the INA provisions at issue gives Secretary of State Marco Rubio the authority to decide that a noncitizen is removable if he “personally determines” that the individual’s views “would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.” The other gives the secretary the power to “at any time, in his discretion” revoke a visa.

The Stanford Daily and the two unnamed former students are asking a federal judge to bar the administration from using the pair of provisions to deport them and any noncitizen members of the newspaper’s staff based on their “protected speech.”

“The First Amendment cements America’s promise that the government may not subject a speaker to disfavored treatment because those in power do not like his or her message. And when a federal statute collides with First Amendment rights, the Constitution prevails,” the attorneys wrote.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of a weekslong bench trial in a separate case in Boston during which members of the Trump administration testified under oath about the government’s targeting of noncitizen pro-Palestinian students and scholars.

The trial, which concluded on July 21, highlighted how DHS began taking orders from the State Department as it went after certain professors and students to change their immigration status and work to have them deported. US District Judge William Young, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, is now deciding whether the government’s “ideological deportation policy” had the effect of unlawfully chilling the speech of certain professors.

The attorneys in that case say the administration’s actions toward pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses have targeted potentially hundreds of noncitizens.

Devan Cole, CNN