She posted an op-ed critical of her universities stance of the Israel Palestine conflict. Trump sent in masked ICE goons to kidnap her in response.
Fascist dictator, Donald Trump, has made it clear that thought crimes will not be tolerated and will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Only speech praising the Trump administration and the decisions the administration has made will be acceptable speech. This has long been reflected by Trump’s war with journalism as he views anything he considers unflattering in the press as a criminal act.
The examples of this are numerous. This includes Trumps demands to jail journalists, the sending of the legal threat to the New York Times and Penguin Randomhouse, the silencing of the Associated Press, the silencing of the Huffington Post and Reuters, Elon Musk echoing Trump’s calls to jail reporters, Kash Patel threatening the media, the two “investigations” against media outlets for publishing thought crimes, the lawsuit against a pollster for the crime of being wrong with a poll, the call to end legal protections for journalists, Trumps renewed call to jail all political opponents, Trump’s renewed call to defund NPR and PBS, and the subsequent congressional hearing against NPR and PBS to name a few examples.
Today, we are learning of the horrifying story of Rumeysa Ozturk. Ozturk, a year ago, apparently co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily criticizing her universities stance of the Palestine Israel war. The response from the Trump administration? Send in masked ICE goons to kidnap her right off the streets:
WGBH also published an article asking why the government kidnapped the student. From WGBH:
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national and PhD student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was arrested outside her off-campus apartment.
“Rumeysa was heading to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast on the evening of March 25th when she was detained near her home in Somerville, MA by Department of Homeland Security [DHS] agents,” said her attorney Mahsa Khanbabai in a statement.
“No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of — We hope Rumeysa will be released immediately,” she said.
In a statement, a senior DHS spokesperson told GBH News that Ozturk was detained over security concerns and that “a visa is a privilege.”
“Investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans,” the statement said without providing more detail. “Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated.”
Khanbabai said Ozturk had valid F-1 visa status as a PhD student. She has filed a habeas petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts for Ozturk’s release from detention.
“Unless otherwise ordered by the Court, petitioner shall not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without first providing advance notice of the intended move,” wrote federal judge Indira Talwani in a three-page order to ICE on Tuesday night.
The problem with those government statements? She did no such thing. The actual article specifically questioned her universities stance on the conflict and argued that by paying tuition, students ought to be considered stakeholders of where the money goes for investment purposes. Nothing about that article was “Glorifying and supporting terrorists”, yet the government saw fit to send in masked goons from ICE to kidnap her right off the streets anyway.
Let’s call a spade a spade here, the government didn’t like her speech and has taken the extreme measure of kidnapping her to not only silence her speech, but to strike fear into others who dare speak their mind. The governments actions here is absolutely disgusting and should be called out for the free speech rights violations that they are. Anyone who supports freedom of expression should be condemning this action.
The actions closely mirrors a report from last month which said that the Heritage Foundation was planning on doxing Wikipedian’s for what the Heritage Foundation considers thought crimes. To a degree, that is playing out here.
Understandably, Techdirt is furious at these developments. From TechDirt:
The government has attempted to justify similar renditions (and there is a growing list of victims) by falsely painting targets as “terrorist supporters” — a dangerous conflation of political speech supporting Palestinian rights with support for terrorism. But even those cases typically involved people involved in public protests, which are themselves constitutionally protected activities. This case goes even further: disappearing someone over an innocuous piece of student journalism published a year ago.
Everyone should be alarmed. Everyone should be demanding that she (and others) be released and that ICE and DHS stop this horrifying and unconscionable practice. Everyone should be demanding that Trump and Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem stop this Gestapo bullshit.
Even if — especially if — you disagree with her views on Israel and Palestine. This isn’t about that. This is about the very concept of freedom. The rights everyone — even visitors — are supposed to have in this country. The right to speak your mind, even if (especially if!) it is opposed to those in power. The right to walk down a street without being kidnapped. The right to due process.
If the government genuinely believed Ozturk had violated immigration law or her visa terms (she hadn’t), there are established legal procedures to address such issues. Instead, they chose to send masked goons to disappear her without warning or due process — a chilling message to every other international student that their supposed right to express political opinions comes with the risk of rendition.
And, of course, the implied threat is that this won’t stop at international students.
But the Trump administration believes not in fundamental rights. It only believes in the cowardly authoritarian displays of theatrical power. Because they are weak and insecure. They are so frightened by a random college student op-ed or a protest, they are taking to disappearing people with no due process for their speech.
This won’t stop unless everyone speaks up and demands that the government respect the rights of everyone. These are bullying and intimidation tactics of weak insecure bullies, who know they cannot win in the marketplace of ideas. They are scared and pathetic, knowing that their beliefs are bad, and that the public doesn’t support them. Thus, their only response is an impotent rage, an attempt to replace respect and fair treatment with authoritarian tactics in hopes of intimidating people into silence and capitulation.
These are scary times, but people need to stop cowering. They need to speak up. They need to show up. They need to say that this is not the America any of us were taught to believe in. This is not the America of freedom and rights.
This is a desecration of the high (and often unmet) ideals of what America is supposed to be striving for. This is spitting on the fundamental concepts of the American project.
I absolutely agree. Unless there is an actual crime being committed that the government hasn’t disclosed (you’d think they would have disclosed it by now, so I have my doubts), then she should be immediately released. No question from me.
