NEWS ALERT: Judge slows deportations for foreign students who are suing Trump

January 23, 2026

From the Washington Examiner: A federal judge issued a sweeping ruling Thursday entitling noncitizen students who have sued the Trump administration to a court hearing if their immigration status is changed.

The Trump administration has faced several hurdles from district courts in pursuing parts of its deportation agenda, including revoking the visas of pro-Palestinian students who have engaged in anti-Israel unrest on college campuses. The lawsuit before U.S. District Judge William Young was brought by a pair of groups, the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, both of which alleged the administration partook in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by revoking the student visas of foreign nationals who were involved in anti-Israel unrest.

Young, in his Thursday order, claimed that there was a “concerted action of the highest Cabinet Officials of the Executive Branch deliberately to violate the First Amendment right of Free Speech of the Plaintiffs’ noncitizen members,” and he issued an order mandating an automatic stay of proceedings if the administration attempts to deport a foreign student who is part of one of the two groups suing them.

The judge outlined that if a noncitizen can prove he or she was a member of one of the groups before March 25, 2025, and continued to be one through Sept. 30, and that they have not been convicted of a crime or had their visa expire, then they are entitled to an automatic pause of deportation efforts proceedings.

The judge’s ruling declared, “Upon such proof, it shall be presumed that the alteration in immigration status is in retribution for the exercise during the course of the present case of their First Amendment rights.”

ABOUT THIS JUDGE: William Glover Young, 85, is a senior U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He was appointed in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan.