CNN
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The State Department had more than a dozen meetings with the White House – including Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff – and other agencies to discuss the topic of student visas, a top department official said in federal court on Friday.
The White House did not comment on the meetings.
John Armstrong, the senior bureau official in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, described to a judge how the State Department used broad definitions of antisemitism when scrutinizing the speech and activities of non-citizen students and professors the department chose to attempt to remove from the US.
Armstrong appeared toward the end of a two-week trial in which a group of university professors who say the administration’s efforts to deport individuals over their anti-Israel views is intended to limit protected political speech.
During his testimony, Armstrong discussed action memos to revoke visas for several students and professors as part of the US’s effort to combat antisemitism, whose definition could include comments against the Israeli government, support of an arms embargo in the war in Gaza or calling for the US to stop military aid to Israel.
“This is not a mundane thing,” Armstrong said. “If we get this stuff wrong, we get 9/11. This is very serious stuff.”
According to previous testimony from Homeland Security agents, a system was established whereby the State Department would send DHS referrals for non-citizens they wanted investigated. DHS would then investigate the person and send a report to the State Department if they believed there was enough to support a visa revocation.
On Friday, Armstrong testified that in several instances the memos to revoke the visas for professors and students noted that the removal orders could become a legal issue because the orders were tied to their speech.
One memo that Armstrong signed himself was for the removal orders for Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk. Following the orders, Öztürk was locked up for several weeks earlier this year after a plainclothes officer approached her on the sidewalk near her house, grabbed her wrists and detained her.
She lost her visa, Armstrong testified, because of an op-ed she co-authored, participation in an anti-Israel protest and loose connection to a banned pro-Palestinian student group.
The federal judge presiding over the case, William Young, said Thursday that it was his current position that First Amendment protections covere non-citizens.
“I’m asking if a lawfully non-citizen has the same rights as a citizen,” Young said Thursday. “Probably they do. The answer is in the affirmative. Again, we are talking about pure speech.”
Closing arguments in the trial will begin Monday.
