This post was updated Oct. 16 at 7:57 p.m.

The Daily Bruin signed onto an amicus brief Wednesday calling on a federal court to protect student journalists from deportation.

The brief, organized by the Student Press Law Center and signed by more than 54 student media outlets and leaders, calls for a summary judgment in Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation et al. v. Rubio et al., a lawsuit filed in August asking for an injunction against the deportation of students on visas. The Bruin believes the threat of deportation has endangered free speech and that the targeting of student journalists must be stopped.

Editors across the country have documented the impacts of this repression on students’ ability to publish.

Fearing deportation, a student on the F-1 visa stopped writing opinions for the Stanford Daily, and another two international students withdrew an op-ed from the Duke Chronicle. Just last month, The Purdue Exponent was forced to lay off its international student staffers to avoid risking their legal status in the United States.

The SPLC’s brief does not call for a general end to all deportations. Rather, it calls for an order to end the federal government’s campaign against college newspapers like ours.

Likewise, we are not taking a stand on any specific deportation. Immigration cases are nuanced, and there are competing opinions on them. However, the fervor with which the federal government has targeted student journalists is both brazen and unacceptable.

When journalists’ ability to publish freely is called into question, other journalists speak up.

In 2018, The New York Times joined news organizations in an amicus brief to call for the release of government documents. The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press filed a brief in February to support an Associated Press lawsuit demanding White House access. Twenty-nine NPR member stations filed an amicus brief in June opposing an executive order that proposed to defund them.

We signed onto this brief because we believe a legal ruling is necessary to protect the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

We believe threatening international students with deportation is unjust and stifles free expression.

We believe that expression on college campuses – centers of free debate, well-justified thought and research – is essential to the health of a modern democracy.

The Bruin is a source of free thought, free speech and the free expression of ideas on our campus. We hope that in signing today’s amicus brief, we can continue to protect our staff’s ability to be a voice of truth.