Trump cannot deport students for criticizing Israel, judge rules - AP News

Judge Nol Wise sided with The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, which argued that international students had grown afraid to speak out because of deportation threats tied to campus protests. The ruling centers on the First Amendment, with the judge writing that free speech is "illusory" if people are only free to express views that align with government positions.

The Trump administration has pursued deportation of noncitizens it says disrupted college campuses while voicing political opinions. That policy put a chill on international students across the country, including those at universities throughout Texas, where large international student populations attend schools like Texas Tech.

For international students here in Lubbock, a ruling like this matters. Students on visas who kept quiet at campus events or avoided signing petitions out of fear now have a federal court saying that silence was never legally required in the first place.

The case was brought by a student newspaper, not an immigration advocacy group, which says something about where the pressure to push back has been coming from on college campuses lately.