MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A federal judge in Boston is hearing a case challenging the Trump administration's effort to deport students and other academics who have supported pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The plaintiffs say the government is violating the Constitution when it tries to deport non-citizens based on their political views. Josh Gerstein is a senior legal affairs reporter for Politico. He's covering the trial, and he is with us now to tell us more about it. Good morning, Josh. Thanks for joining us.
JOSH GERSTEIN: Hey, Michel, good to be with you.
MARTIN: So people will have heard a lot of news because we've covered a lot of news about emergency motions or temporary injunctions, but this is an actual trial. Why is that significant?
GERSTEIN: Well, it's really the first protracted, prolonged trial that we've seen about a Trump administration policy. You're right, there have been a lot of emergency hearings, maybe even one or two sort of one-day trials in one-off cases about all sorts of things, including deportation issues, government funding issues, firing of government employees. But this is the first, I think, real trial-trial, which is going to go on for two weeks, is going to hear testimony from witnesses on both sides. There's no jury. It's not a jury trial. It's in front of a judge. But it's the first sort of prolonged courtroom showdown about a Trump administration policy as opposed to a specific episode or incident involving a specific person.
MARTIN: So I understand that the trial is centered on the question of whether foreign visitors to the U.S. enjoy the same constitutional right to free speech as citizens do. Is that accurate?
GERSTEIN: Yeah, and it goes beyond sort of short-term visitors. Many of the people involved are, you know, long-term foreign students or green card holders. And it also revolves around some of the high-profile incidents people will have heard about over the last couple of months of students and scholars in that group who've been detained by ICE or put into deportation proceedings.
MARTIN: So what have you heard over the first couple of days?
GERSTEIN: Well, we've been hearing mostly from professors who work at major universities, for example, at Harvard or Tufts, elsewhere, talking about the impact that this episode has had on them, these episodes of these detentions have had on them. And it's interesting. The witnesses we've been hearing from are mostly professors who are not U.S. citizens. The first one who testified was from Canada. Another one who testified was from Germany. And they all said that they have curtailed aspects of their public advocacy, their political activities in the U.S., and also their international travel and some of their professional activities because they're now concerned that if they sort of come to the attention of the Trump administration, they could be put into the same kind of deportation proceedings as many of these pro-Palestinian students and activists.
MARTIN: So we need to hear what the government's response is. What's the core argument, and how is the government responding?
GERSTEIN: Well, I mean, the core argument here is that this policy is unconstitutional and infringes First Amendment rights, both of citizens and non-citizens alike. The government insists there is no ideological deportation policy, that they're just taking actions against people based on their activities in the United States and not really their beliefs. But there is this central question of whether there are full First Amendment rights for these foreigners that are on U.S. soil.
MARTIN: That's Josh Gerstein. He's a senior legal affairs reporter with Politico. Josh, thank you so much for joining us.
GERSTEIN: Thank you.
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