The Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students and academics violated the First Amendment by targeting them for expressing their political views, a federal judge ruled in an unusual opinion that broadly and sharply criticized President Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge William G. Young in Boston said that noncitizens have the same First Amendment rights as Americans. Young, who presided over a trial in July, said the case “squarely presents the issue whether noncitizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us,” Young said.

“The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do,’” Young said.

The suit, filed in March by a pair of education groups, argued the administration engaged in “ideological deportation” by canceling the visas of legal residents who engaged in campus activism. It was the first trial challenging the government’s authority to deport foreign students who protested the war in Gaza.

But the 161-page ruling is a departure from how opinions are usually written. The judge blasted Trump’s immigration policies in a highly critical opinion, which begins with “Trump has pardons and tanks ... What do you have?” scrawled across the top of the court document, above the traditional case information.

Spokespeople at the White House and at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately return emails seeking comment about the ruling.

In the opinion, Young said that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their subordinates acted together “to misuse the sweeping powers” of their offices to target pro-Palestinian noncitizens “primarily on account of the First Amendment protected political speech.” They did so to “strike fear” into other noncitizens backing Palestinian rights.

“The effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day,” wrote Young, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1985.

The judge followed his ruling with a 13-page section titled “JUSTICE IN THE TRUMP ERA,” in which the judge is sharply critical of Trump’s actions in office. Young begins by quoting his wife: “He seems to be winning. He ignores everything and keeps bullying ahead.”

‘Behold President Trump’s successes’

“Behold President Trump’s successes in limiting free speech – law firms cower, institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease the President, media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism,” Young wrote.

Andrew Crespo, a Harvard Law School professor and general counsel to the American Association of University Professors Harvard faculty chapter, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said that he had “never seen an opinion like this one, authored by a Republican appointed judge with 40 years of experience on the bench.”

“It is a wake up call to every American about the dire authoritarian threats facing our nation, and the need for all citizens to stand up for our core constitutional rights, including the bedrock right to speak out when our government threatens our liberties,” he added.

Young characterized Trump’s manner of speech as “triumphal, transactional, imperative, bellicose, and coarse.”

“It seeks to persuade – not through marshaling data driven evidence, science, or moral suasion, but through power,” he wrote.

The case is AAUP et al v. Marco Rubio, 25-cv-10685US District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Boston)

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