Responding to FIRE's quarterly National Speech Index survey conducted by the Dartmouth Polarization Research Lab this month, a mere one-quarter of the respondents supported the deportation of non-citizens legally in the US for expressing pro-Palestine views. A solid majority of 52 percent are strongly opposed or opposed to such measures.

The survey result comes as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has boasted of revoking "at least 300" student visas for the "crime" of expressing a position on middle east politics that the current US Administration disagrees with. Derided by Rubio as "lunatics" for opposing ongoing US government support for Israel as Gaza is flattened, many foreign students have been arrested by masked, armed federal agents – who refuse to even identify themselves – and sent to a federal detention facility in Louisiana.