In a federal courtroom in Boston, a Reagan-appointed judge absolutely slammed the Trump administration, calling its aggressive deportation crackdown an “unconstitutional conspiracy” straight out of an authoritarian playbook.
U.S. District Judge William Young on Thursday said the administration’s actions against pro-Palestinian students at American universities weren’t just bad policy — they were a flagrant attack on the First Amendment. “Talking straight here,” Young told the courtroom, “The big problem in this case is that the Cabinet secretaries and ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment.”
That’s not a mild rebuke. It’s a full-on legal slap.
At issue is a Trump campaign that saw senior officials — including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — redirect intelligence personnel away from their usual duties and toward compiling internal reports on peaceful university activists. Those reports were then used to support visa revocations and detentions — at times pulling noncitizen students off campuses and throwing them into ICE facilities for weeks without charges.
According to testimony, officials relied heavily on information from private sources like Canary Mission — a controversial pro-Israel database — to justify these immigration actions. Young’s reaction was blistering. He described the conduct as designed to punish students not for any crimes, but for their speech and views.
And then came the constitutional framing that will dominate headlines:
“It’s fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone … in Article II is going to toe the line absolutely.” — Judge William Young.
That’s an accusation of authoritarianism from the bench of a federal judge appointed by a Republican president.
The case was originally brought by academic groups like the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, which argued the administration’s campaign was designed to intimidate and silence dissent rather than enforce legitimate immigration policy.
Unsurprisingly, the White House fought back. A spokesperson slammed the remarks as “bizarre” and accused Young of engaging in “left-wing activism.” Meanwhile, DHS officials doubled down privately, saying “there is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers.”
But Young’s position seems rooted in more than partisan theater. He’s already signaled plans to issue an order protecting noncitizen members of the plaintiff organizations from retaliatory immigration actions — a clear attempt to rein in executive overreach.
And he’s not shy about using the word authoritarian to describe it.
