Above photo: Cornell graduate student and PhD candidate Momodou Taal speaks to a crowd of students, faculty and local Ithacans at a pro-Palestinian protest in front of Day Hall, Cornell’s Administrative building. Matt Dougherty.
National injunction demanded.
A Cornell professor and two graduate students are suing the Trump administration for violating the First Amendment as it seeks to deport international students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza under the guise of protecting national security.
Trump’s salvo of executive orders targeting what amounts to student thought crimes means the Cornell scholars “now fear government retaliation for engaging in constitutionally protected expression critical of U.S. foreign policy and supportive of Palestinian human rights,” according to the lawsuit, filed Saturday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District.
The climate of fear produced by the executive orders has caused co-plaintiff Momodou Taal to cancel speaking engagements, substantially limit his social media posts and refuse to discuss politics with associates at his university “for fear that his words will be misinterpreted and reported to government authorities.”
Momodou Taal said: “The U.S. government claims to be zealous about free speech — except when it comes to Palestine. We’ve been here before: McCarthyism to Civil Rights to Vietnam, times when this country has deviated from its stated commitments to free speech. This is another generational moment, another hour of reckoning. Why is there a Palestine exception?”
“Americans, I echo Martin Luther King’s words when I call on you to be true to what you say on paper. Join me in defending all of our speech.”
As the White House acknowledges, its sweeping, content-based attack on the speech and associational rights of citizens and non-citizens lawfully present in the U.S. is “unprecedented.”
The orders’ references to “terrorism,” “Hamas,” and “anti-Americanism” are pretextual scare tactics and have “imposed an unconstitutional chilling effect” on the plaintiffs, the lawsuit says.
Taal added: “Only in a dictatorship can the leader jail and banish political opponents for criticizing his administration. A nationwide injunction is therefore necessary while the Court considers the merits.”
The orders also violate the First and Fifth Amendment rights of Cornell Professor Mukoma Wa Ngũgĩ and Cornell graduate student Sriram Parasurama, American citizens who are prohibited from engaging with viewpoints critical of the U.S. government or the government of Israel.
Prof. Wa Ngũgĩ said: “I was born in the U.S. but grew up under the Moi dictatorship in Kenya in the 1980s. Students and people of conscience in Kenya were being detained, tortured, exiled or killed. My own family experienced the full brunt of this oppressive society. When I moved back to the U.S. in the early 1990s I could not foresee this attempt to chill free speech and directly attack our universities. But more relatedly, I was invited to the Palestinian Book Festival in 2024 but I could not go because of tthe genocide.. There simply was no place to go because Irse and fear of safety. Every University in Gaza has been destroyed.” As a teacher, writer and scholar this is unacceptable..
Sriram Parasurama said: “These draconian executive orders aim to crack down on those willing to protest against our country’s active role in the genocide of the Palestinian people. They are part of a broader moral crisis our nation is grappling with. This lawsuit allows us to recover our basic rights and protect international students like Momodou Taal.”
The lawsuit argues that non-citizens like Taal, a British-Gambian national who resides lawfully in the U.S., is constitutionally protected and cannot be singled out for deportation. “The First Amendment protects ‘people’ and not citizens alone. This includes non-citizens living in the U.S.,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit comes amid the unscrupulous enforcement of two executive orders — “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats” and “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” — in recent days.
Last Saturday, former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green cardholder and U.S. legal resident, was arrested by agents from the Department of Homeland Security in New York and transferred to a detention facility over a thousand miles away in Louisiana.
Khalil has not been charged with any crime, yet President Trump proudly slandered him as a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student”.
A raft of raids has followed, leading to the arrest on Friday of a second Palestinian student who had taken part in protests at Columbia University. On Tuesday, a Columbia doctoral student returned home to India after the state department revoked their visa a week earlier.
Eric Lee, lead counsel, said:
“If ‘the people’ lack the right to criticize the U.S. government or listen to such criticisms, the First Amendment is a dead letter. Only in a dictatorship can the president detain and banish individuals for criticizing his administration and its policies. The claim that such restrictions are needed to fight “terrorism” is a lie aimed at chilling speech.
“This lawsuit aims to vindicate the rights of all non-citizens and citizens in the U.S., but the courthouse is only one arena in this fight. We appeal to the population: stand up and exercise your First Amendment rights by actively and vigorously opposing the danger of dictatorship. As we prepare to mark the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution next year, recall the words from the Declaration of Independence: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
Chris Godshall-Bennett, Legal Director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), who is co-counsel on this case, said:
“Enough is enough. We will not stand idly by while the government infringes upon the fundamental liberties that define us as a free society. Through this litigation, we seek both immediate and long-term relief to protect international students from any unconstitutional overreach that stifles free expression and deters them from fully engaging in academic and public discourse.”
Maria Kari, Attorney for Plaintiffs said:
“President Trump’s actions targeting pro-Palestinian voices set a dangerous precedent where the government can suppress opinions through abuse of power. This case is not just about protecting our clients – it’s fighting for the soul of our country. We are headed into dangerous territory, where speech is rebranded as a threat, and the government decides who belongs in the public square.”
“We either push back now or look back at this moment and wonder how we let it all unravel. We stand firm in our commitment to challenge this administration’s unconstitutional measures and to protect the rights of all individuals to express their views without fear of detention or deportation.”