Trump effort to deport pro-Palestinian students suffers setbacks – but the legal question still looms

The administration seems to be getting clobbered in court, but it's still unsettled whether the government can detain and deport noncitizens over political speech

The Trump administration suffered yet another blow this past week to its efforts to deport international students over their pro-Palestinian speech, when a third federal judge threw a wrench into a government campaign widely criticized as a political witch hunt with little historical precedent.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Virginia ordered immigration authorities to release Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri from custody. The Indian scholar's release followed that of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, and Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian permanent resident and Columbia University student. The administration is seeking to deport all of them on the grounds that their presence in the US is harmful to the country's foreign policy, part of a crackdown on political dissent that has sent shockwaves through US campuses.