Two Cornell University graduate students and a professor are suing the Trump administration over recent executive orders they say violate their free speech rights and those of other pro-Palestinian activists.
The lawsuit, filed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, calls for an injunction on two executive orders they argue “authorize deportation or prosecution based on protected speech.”
The lawsuit will be heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York Wednesday.
This comes after federal immigration officers arrested two Columbia University pro-Palestinian student activists, including Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident. Khalil has not been charged with a crime.
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is Momodou Taal, an international Cornell PhD student and pro-Palestinian activist.
“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,” Taal said in a statement.
The lawsuit says recent executive orders violate Taal and other plaintiffs’ First and Fifth Amendment rights to freedom of speech and due process. Fear of enforcement of these executive orders prohibits them from “speaking, hearing, or engaging with viewpoints critical of the U.S. government or the government of Israel, under threat of criminal prosecution or deportation,” according to the complaint submitted by Taal’s attorney.
Chris Godshall-Bennett is the legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and co-counsel on the case. He said threatening demonstrators with deportation or federal charges is a clear encroachment on free speech rights for citizens and non-citizens alike.
“We should as a society altogether, be extremely alarmed by the effort to punish protective speech with any penalties, but certainly with the penalties as severe as deportation or federal criminal prosecution,” Godshall-Bennett told WSKG.
A Trump executive order listed in the complaint, “Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” states that one of its purposes is to “ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.”
References to U.S. culture are particularly vague and could be applied to all sorts of speech, Godshall-Bennet said.
“It's hard to think what wouldn't be swept up, except things that you know the administration is fine with people saying.”
Taal is suing alongside another Cornell University graduate student and activist, Sriram Parsurama, and Cornell professor Dr. Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ.
Both Parasurama and Ngũgĩ are U.S. citizens. The complaint argues that the executive orders limit their freedom of speech and their ability to engage with and associate with Taal without fear of government reprisal.
The Trump administration did not respond to WSKG’s requests for comment.