Rare legal challenge to Trump-backed deportations of pro-Palestinian campus activists

Groups representing US university professors are set to go to trial as they seek to protect international students and faculty engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy from deportation under the Trump administration's immigration agenda.

A two-week non-jury trial in the professors' case scheduled to kick off on Monday in Boston marks a rarity in the hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed nationally challenging President Donald Trump's efforts to carry out mass deportations, slash spending and reshape the federal government.

In many of those cases, judges have issued quick rulings early on in the proceedings without any witnesses being called to testify. But US District Judge William Young, in keeping with his long-standing practice, instead ordered a trial in the professors' case, saying it was the "best way to get at truth".

The lawsuit was filed in March after immigration authorities arrested recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, the first target of Trump's effort to deport non-citizen students with pro-Palestinian views.

Since then, the administration has cancelled the visas of hundreds of other students and scholars and ordered the arrest of some.

Reporting by Reuters