A senior State Department official testified Friday that his office, which the Trump administration has tasked with vetting foreign students’ social media posts and revoking student visas, has operated this year without a working definition of “antisemitism” and routinely considers criticism of Israel as part of its work.
The testimony, at the end of a two-week trial focused on the Trump administration’s efforts to deport students such as Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and others, helped build the case by the academic groups behind the lawsuit, who have argued that the government systematically targeted students based on their remarks about Israel.
During a heated back-and-forth in Federal District Court in Boston, John Armstrong, the senior bureau official in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, said that the State Department regularly took into account speech or actions that it saw as hostile toward Israel.
Pushed for examples of things he might consider in weighing whether to deny or revoke a student’s visa, Mr. Armstrong testified that calls for limiting military aid to Israel or “denouncing Zionism” could all factor in his agency’s decisions.
“In your view, a statement criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza could be covered depending on the statement, right?” asked Alexandra Conlon, a lawyer representing the organizations behind the lawsuit.
“Yes, depending on the statement, it could definitely,” he said. “You say that they’re worse than Hitler with what they’re doing in Gaza? — that would be a statement that, I think, would lead in that direction that you seem to be going, counselor.”
But Mr. Armstrong said the State Department did not conduct its reviews based on a common understanding of what qualified as “antisemitism.”
“I cannot remember a concrete piece of guidance,” he said. “It seems to me, there may have been some, but I do not remember a concrete cable where I can say, ‘This cable defines antisemitism.’”
Earlier in his testimony, Mr. Armstrong stressed repeatedly that he and his colleagues consider “the totality of the situation,” especially when making a recommendation to the secretary of state. In cases like that of Mr. Khalil — who is a lawful permanent resident — immigration laws required that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to personally sign off on beginning a process to deport him.
At one point, Judge William G. Young, who is presiding over the trial, intervened to ask for clarity about how Mr. Armstrong himself determined whether certain statements or actions were antisemitic.
