Trump’s crackdown on students with visas and green cards sets up First Amendment showdown– www.cbsnews.com
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Washington — The Trump administration’s crackdown on students who participated in pro-Palestinian activities have raised questions about the First Amendment rights of visa and green card holders amid the shocking detentions of a number of students at Tufts, Columbia and other universities in recent weeks.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that authorizes the nation’s top diplomat to revoke the visas of foreign national students on the grounds that their presence or activities have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the U.S.
The federal government is not required to lay out proof beyond that explanation, legal experts told CBS News, setting up a legal showdown over foreign nationals’ free speech rights in the U.S.
“There’s a tension between everyone’s First Amendment rights to free speech and the immigration statute’s broad provisions giving the secretary of state broad latitude to declare someone deportable simply because he thinks that the student may have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences. And the courts will have to figure out where the appropriate line should be drawn,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired immigration law professor at Cornell University.