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A judge Tuesday issued an extraordinary 161-page rebuke of President Donald Trump while finding that the U.S. government impermissibly violated the First Amendment by targeting pro-Palestinian student activists for deportation.

U.S. District Judge Bill Young’s ruling was the long-anticipated result of a lawsuit brought by university professors who alleged that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and other Trump officials intentionally violated First Amendment speech protections to chill pro-Palestine campus speech.

Young, based in Massachusetts, agreed with the plaintiffs, finding that by explicitly targeting pro-Palestinian student activists like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk for deportation, the Trump administration sought to “strike fear” into similarly situated non-citizen students and stifle political activity it disagrees with.

Young, 85, who has been on the bench for four decades after being appointed by then-President Ronald Reagan in 1985, said the case was “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court.”

The constitutional question before Young was whether non-citizens lawfully present in the country have the same free speech rights as U.S. citizens. 

Young ruled “unequivocally” they do.

“‘No law’ means ‘no law,’” Young said, referring to the text of the First Amendment, which in part states that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech” or “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Young ruled that the First Amendment could not draw on the Trump administration’s “invidious distinction” between citizens and non-citizens, which the judge said “is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence.”

“No one’s freedom of speech is unlimited, of course, but these limits are the same for both citizens and non-citizens alike,” he wrote. 

“The president’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech.”

Intimidating non-citizen students, Young noted in a footnote, was just one aspect of the Trump administration’s “full-throated assault on the First Amendment across the board under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition of Anti-Semitism.”

Though he found that the government violated the First Amendment, Young for now held off on ordering changes to administration policies. The judge said he would hold additional proceedings to secure relief that goes beyond ordering public officials to “cease and desist in the future.” He warned, however, that given Trump and the “rapidly changing nature of the Executive Branch under Article II of our Constitution,” a remedy might not be obtainable. 

Young’s opinion was remarkable in its candid assessment of the Trump administration’s effort to squelch political speech in general — not just on college campuses — and Trump’s autocratic tendencies as a leader.

“Behold President Trump’s successes in limiting free speech – law firms cower, institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease the President, media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism.”

The judge included in his ruling a 12-page assessment of the president himself, saying that Trump routinely ignores the Constitution, laws, regulations and customs while governing but will readily and aggressively deploy the legal system against those who stand in his way.

“Now that he is our duly elected President after a full and fair election, he not only enjoys broad immunity from any personal liability, he is prepared to deploy all the resources of the nation against obstruction,” Young wrote. “Daunting prospect, isn’t it?”

Young also heavily chided Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officials for routinely wearing masks while carrying out immigration-related arrests. Masked agents arrested both Khalil and Öztürk earlier this year.

“ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence,” Young wrote. “To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it.”

At the very top of the opinion, before even listing the parties involved in the case, Young included a copy of an anonymous handwritten postcard his chambers recently received.

“Trump has pardons and tanks, what do you have?” the postcard read.

In reply, Young stated, “Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution.”

“Here’s how that works out in a specific case,” the judge added.

The rest of the opinion served as a response to the anonymous postcard. At the end, the judge thanked the anonymous writer and invited them to “stop in at the Courthouse and watch your fellow citizens, sitting as jurors, reach out for justice.”

“It is here, and in courthouses just like this one, both state and federal, spread throughout our land that our Constitution is most vibrantly alive,” Young wrote.

Jacob Knutson is a reporter at Democracy Docket and covers anti-Trump accountability litigation. He is from South Dakota and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism, English and political science from Augustana University. Before joining Democracy Docket, he covered breaking news at Axios.

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