Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today! 

Newly unsealed memos by the State Department on the Trump administration’s push to deport pro-Palestine student advocates have confirmed that officials knew the cases against the students were shaky and likely to run up against their First Amendment rights.

The documents were unsealed by a federal judge on Thursday. The case, brought by academic groups, has been full of bombshell revelations on the role of top officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the campaign dubbed as “unconstitutional” by the judge last week.

The documents concerned five students who have been targeted by the Trump administration: Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yunseo Chung, and Badar Khan Suri. The memos were released in response to a request by news outlets to unseal them for the public interest.

In every case, the memos showed that the administration was seeking to remove students over some form of advocacy for Palestinian rights amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

On Chung and Khalil, the State Department claimed that the two Columbia University........

© Truthout