Visa and immigration policy: International students and freedom of speech, 2
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaking with reporters on March 27, 2025.
Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett.
Rubio denies overreach on speech, asserts power to bar “disruptive” activists
Asked by the press on March 28, 2025, specifically about the implications that targeting activists would have for students’ freedom of speech, Secretary of State Marco Rubio remarked:1
“The overwhelming majority of student visas in this country will not be revoked.… I think there’s a little bit of common sense here. You come to the States and then you decide you don’t like those paper straws that some of the stores are selling, and you start protesting or complaining about paper straws—I mean, we’re obviously not going to yank a visa over that.… No one has a right to a visa.… What I would add to it is what we have seen on campuses across the country where students literally cannot go to school—buildings are being taken over, activities going on—this is clearly an organized movement. And if you are in this country on a student visa and are a participant in those movements, we have a right to deny your visa. I think it would make sense to deny your visa. We’re going to err on the side of caution. We are not going to be importing activists into the United States. [Student visa holders are] here to study. They’re here to go to class. They’re not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine our universities.”
Judge rules government violated non-citizens’ speech rights
The government’s policies have been subject to litigation on free-speech grounds, most notably in a case filed on March 25, 2025, and led by the American Association of University Professors, a union and membership association. AAUP argued that deportation threats had systematically chilled its non-citizen members’ First Amendment rights, and the judge in that case sided with the plaintiffs in a lengthy ruling issued on September 30, 2025, referring to the case as “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court.”
At the beginning of his ruling in the case of AAUP v. Rubio, Judge William Young responded to an anonymous note he had received, underscoring the importance he attached to the principle reaffirmed in the ruling: that freedoms guaranteed by the US Constitution apply equally to citizens and non-citizens. Young was first appointed to the bench by President Reagan in 1985.
American Association of University Professors v. Rubio, September 30, 2025.
The ruling reaffirmed that First Amendment rights are the same for citizens and non-citizens and found “by clear and convincing evidence that the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with subordinate officials and agents of each of them, deliberately and with purposeful aforethought, did so concert their actions and those of their two departments intentionally to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble of the non-citizen plaintiff members of the plaintiff organization.”2
In January 2026, the judge limited remedies in the case to members of AAUP and other plaintiff organizations, stating that immigration enforcement actions taken against them be vacated and presumed to have resulted from “retribution” for the exercise of their First Amendment rights, unless the government could present clear evidence to the contrary in a court proceeding.3 The broader issue may well remain contested in other circumstances.
References
- Marco Rubio, remarks, March 28, 2025, https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-remarks-to-the-press-3/.
- AAUP v. Rubio, September 30, 2025, see below.
- AAUP v. Rubio, January 22, 2026, see below.
Documents
AAUP v Rubio, ruling, September 30, 2025 (.pdf, 616 kb) AAUP v Rubio, judgment, January 22, 2026 (.pdf, 265 kb)Cite this resource
AIP Policy Research, “International students and freedom of speech, 2,” Visa and immigration policy guide, American Institute of Physics, 2026, https://www.aip.org/research/visa-immigration/freedom-of-speech-2.
Last updated
March 7, 2026