'Take a position!' Appeals court judge admonishes Trump DOJ in 'heated exchange'

An appeals court judge got into a "heated exchange" with a lawyer for the federal government who couldn't answer whether two detained students with pro-Palestinian views had the right to free speech in the United States, according to NBC News.

Tufts University student Rumeysa Öztürk was plucked off the streets of a Boston suburb and detained by ICE after co-authoring an op-ed criticizing the university for its stance on the war in Gaza, while student Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested during his citizenship naturalization interview because he had organized pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.

Öztürk remains in detention in Louisiana, while Mahdawi was released on bail last week.

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During a hearing Tuesday, Judge Barrington Parker Jr. grew frustrated when Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign refused to answer whether the international students' free speech was protected under the Constitution.

“Your honor, we haven’t taken a position on that," Ensign said.

Judge Parker responded, “Help my thinking along. Take a position.”

But Ensign replied: “I don’t have the authority to make those decisions. At the moment, it’s not a live issue.”

Following his release, and as he prepares for his deportation hearing, Mahdawi wrote a column this week for The New York Times.

"Despite spending 16 nights in a jail cell, I never lost hope in the inevitability of justice and the principles of democracy," he wrote. "I wanted to become a citizen of this country because I believe in the principles that it enshrines. When Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ruled in my favor, he reassured me, along with the American people, that there is still reason to hope in those principles. But the road to justice is long. My freedom is intertwined with the freedom of the other students, who exercised the same free speech rights as I did yet languish in jail, and is intertwined with that of the Palestinians, who are fighting for their right to life and justice, too."

Read the NBCNews.com article here.