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BOSTON (AP) 鈥� A federal bench trial begins Monday over a lawsuit that challenges a Trump administration campaign of arresting and deporting faculty and students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and other political activities.

The lawsuit, filed by several university associations against President Donald Trump and members of his administration, would be one of the first to go to trial. Plaintiffs want U.S. District Judge William Young to rule the policy violates the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act, a law governs the process by which federal agencies develop and issue regulations.

鈥淭he policy鈥檚 effects have been swift. Noncitizen students and faculty across the United States have been terrified into silence,” the plaintiffs wrote in their pretrial brief.

鈥淪tudents and faculty are avoiding political protests, purging their social media, and withdrawing from public engagement with groups associated with pro-Palestinian viewpoints,鈥� they wrote. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e abstaining from certain public writing and scholarship they would otherwise have pursued. They鈥檙e even self-censoring in the classroom.鈥�

Several scholars are expected to testify how the policy and subsequent arrests have prompted them to abandon their activism for Palestinian human rights and criticizing Israeli government鈥檚 policies.

Since Trump took office, the U.S. government has used its immigration enforcement powers to crack down on international students and scholars at several American universities.

Trump and other officials have accused protesters and others of being 鈥減ro-Hamas,鈥� referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Many protesters have said they were speaking out against Israel鈥檚 actions in the war.

Plaintiffs single out several activists by name, including Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who was released last month after spending 104 days in federal immigration detention. Khalil has become a symbol of Trump 鈥檚 clampdown on campus protests.

The lawsuit also references Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was released in May from a Louisiana immigration detention. She spent six weeks in detention after she was arrested walking on the street of a Boston suburb. She claims she was illegally detained following an op-ed she co-wrote last year that criticized the school鈥檚 response to Israel鈥檚 war in Gaza.

The plaintiffs also accuse the Trump administration of supplying names to universities who they wanted to target, launching a social media surveillance program and used Trump鈥檚 own words in which he said after Khalil鈥檚 arrest that his was the 鈥渇irst arrest of many to come.鈥�

The government argued in court documents that the plaintiffs are bringing a First Amendment challenge to a policy 鈥渙f their own creation.鈥�

鈥淭hey do not try to locate this program in any statute, regulation, rule, or directive. They do not allege that it is written down anywhere. And they do not even try to identify its specific terms and substance,鈥� the government argues. 鈥淭hat is all unsurprising, because no such policy exists.鈥�

They argue the plaintiffs case also rest on a 鈥渕isunderstanding of the First Amendment, 鈥漺hich under binding Supreme Court precedent applies differently in the immigration context than it otherwise does domestically.”

But plaintiffs counter that evidence at the trial will show the Trump administration has implemented the policy a variety of ways, including issuing formal guidance on revoking visas and green cards and establishing a process for identifying those involved in pro-Palestinian protests.

“Defendants have described their policy, defended it, and taken political credit for it,” plaintiffs wrote. 鈥淚t is only now that the policy has been challenged that they say, incredibly, that the policy does not actually exist. But the evidence at trial will show that the policy鈥檚 existence is beyond cavil.鈥�