Requests for US legal aid linked to Palestine activism far surpass pre-2023 levels

A civil rights group dedicated to the defense of pro-Palestinian speech said that requests for legal assistance linked to Palestine-related activism in the US continues to far surpass pre-2023 levels, having logged 300% more requests for support last year than in any year prior to Israel’s war in Gaza.Palestine Legal logged some 1,131 requests in 2025. That was less than the record 2,184 requests it received in 2024, amid the peak of student protests and encampments, but well above its yearly average prior to the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks and Israel’s response in Gaza.“With Trump’s return to power in January 2025, the authoritarian repression of the Palestine solidarity movement in the United States – already at unprecedented heights with the Biden administration’s crackdown on dissent against the US-backed genocide – went into overdrive,” the group wrote in a report published on Tuesday.Pro-Palestinian protests were smaller and more sparse in 2025 than they were in spring 2024, when thousands of students across the country were arrested. Universities responded with an array of new restrictions and punitive responses, and Trump’s return to office in January 2025 led to a showdown between the federal government and universities the administration accused of antisemitism.Most of the requests fielded by Palestine Legal in 2025 related to student activism, including 40 at K-12 institutions and 663 at universities. Most have to do with student suspensions and bans from campus over Palestine-related advocacy.The group is representing, for example, three Harvard University students who are facing discipline for protesting against the campus appearance of the CEO of a fossil-fuel company, who is also a board member of the weapon manufacturer Lockheed Martin board. The students are the first to be investigated by a new disciplinary body – the University Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (UCRR) – which Harvard set up in response to demands from the Trump administration.“We have said for a long time that Palestine is the canary in the coalmine,” said Tori Porell, an attorney representing the Harvard students. “But once these policies and systems are put in place, they can be used against anyone: climate protesters, those speaking against Trump, racial justice protesters.”Palestine Legal also saw a spike in immigration-related requests after Trump returned to office and signed an executive order to target pro-Palestine student activists, leading to “a cascade of unlawful and cruel state-mandated kidnappings intended to intimidate and silence the growing student movement for Palestinian rights”, the group noted.Following the detention by immigration authorities of Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi and several other foreign nationals who had been outspoken about Palestinian rights, many foreign nationals reached out to the group fearing “being stripped of their status, deported, or detained” – some 122 immigration-related intakes, more than three times the number of comparable inquiries the group received in 2024.Palestine Legal, which refers cases to a network of more than 2,000 attorneys, said it also fielded 50 requests relating to criminal investigations, 163 related to “adverse employment decisions”, and 162 accounts of harassment.The group also noted a series of legal wins for the pro-Palestine movement. Courts have rejected claims against Palestine advocacy groups brought under antiterrorism statutes, as well as suits that sought to depict pro-Palestine speech like chants, slogans and encampments as discrimination or harassment.Still, even when ultimately unsuccessful, so-called “lawfare” against the pro-Palestine movement exacts “real costs”, the group wrote. “The chilling effect is not incidental; it is the point”.There were other wins. Last summer, the University of Maryland reached a $100,000 settlement with the campus Students for Justice in Palestine chapter after suing the university over its ban on an October 7 interfaith vigil mourning Palestinian lives lost in Gaza. And last fall, a federal judge in Boston ruled in a blistering opinion that the detention of Khalil and other students over their Palestine advocacy was unconstitutional and designed to chill speech.“Students are the biggest threat because they are the ones who are changing public opinion,” said Khalidi, pointing to profound transformations in Americans’ views of Israel that are beginning to reconfigure the political map. “They represent a moral compass for all of us.”