Palestine Legal Receives 300% More Requests in 2025 Than Before the Start of Israel’s Genocide

The Palestine solidarity movement in the U.S. continues to protest the U.S. and Israel's atrocities in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran despite intensified repression from the Trump administration.

CONTACT: Palestine Legal Media media@palestinelegal.org

April 21, 2026 – Palestine Legal, a legal aid organization that supports the movement for Palestinian freedom in the U.S., received 300% more legal requests last year than its annual average before 2023, when Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza began.

The overwhelming majority of requests came from students and faculty at colleges and universities, demonstrating how higher education remains one of the primary front lines of dissent against the Trump administration. Increased ICE activity and politically targeted deportations also affected Palestine Legal’s client base, with immigration and border-related intakes jumping to 122 in 2025—more than three times the number of comparable inquiries in 2024.

"Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” said Dima Khalidi, executive director of Palestine Legal. “Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the U.S. to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us."

From day one, the Trump administration, with the aid of complicit universities, launched a sweeping campaign of repression. From sending ICE agents to kidnap and detain non-citizen student activists, to using opposition to genocide on campuses as a pretext to extort universities and cut their federal funding, to trying to smear pro-Palestine student groups as supporters of "terrorism", the administration has leveraged executive authority to unconstitutionally target student speech.

In recent months, several U.S. courts have rightly ruled in favor of pro-Palestinian protesters, delivering blow after blow to Trump's agenda and Israel lobby groups' lawfare strategy. From ordering Palestinian protester Leqaa Kordia to be released from ICE detention, to exonerating student protesters at Columbia, to affirming First Amendment rights, courts are creating a “body of law” that upholds the right to advocate and organize for Palestinian rights. These precedents are a crucial bulwark against government and Israel lobby groups' attempts to bulldoze speech rights and misuse civil rights laws to silence criticism of Israel.

Last year, Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced a historic $100,000 settlement agreement for University of Maryland Students for Justice in Palestine, paid by the University of Maryland after the school banned the students' vigil for victims of the genocide in Gaza. The settlement likely marked the highest financial penalty ever imposed on a U.S. university for violating pro-Palestinian students' free speech rights, demonstrating that violating pro-Palestinian students' First Amendment rights has tangible consequences.

The impact of widespread protests to Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is crystal clear, with major polls showing huge shifts in public opinion. For the first time in more than two decades, a Gallup poll found that more Americans express sympathy with Palestinians over Israelis by 5%. Among young people, the shift is even more dramatic, with nearly 7 in 10 voters under 30 opposing sending economic and military aid to Israel, according to a September 2025 Times/Siena poll.

Read Palestine Legal’s 2025 report here: The Front Lines of Dissent: The Palestine Movement Resists Trump's Authoritarian Attacks, While Universities Surrender.

About Palestine Legal: Founded in 2012, Palestine Legal is an organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the U.S. who speak out for Palestinian freedom. Palestine Legal is the only legal organization in the U.S. exclusively dedicated to supporting the movement for Palestinian rights. Our attorneys are based in Chicago, New York City, and the Bay Area, and our work spans all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

Contact us at media@palestinelegal.org for comment from Palestine Legal attorneys and experts.