First They Came for the Op-Ed Writers
On March 25, six masked federal agents seized a Turkish graduate student on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. Rumeysa Ozturk—who was wearing a hajib—is a Fulbright scholar working on a doctorate at Tufts University.
She was abducted and vanished into the maw of the federal prison system. The Trump administration ignored a federal court order and took Ozturk from Massachusetts to Louisiana federal detention facilities.
But the Trump administration knew Ozturk had criticized the government of Israel a year earlier, enough to seal her doom according to the latest iron-fisted political correctness dictates. She co-authored one piece for the Tufts student newspaper criticizing the university’s refusal to divest from Israel despite “credible accusations of…. indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson justified the takedown: “DHS and ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated.” Ozturk never mentioned Hamas in her op-ed. Ozturk has not been linked to any campus protests at Tufts or elsewhere. The feds have failed to reveal any evidence Ozturk supports Hamas. She simply co-wrote an opinion piece. As the New York Post noted on Friday, DHS “alleged that Ozturk was a supporter of Hamas but has yet to provide any evidence to that effect.” On Friday evening, federal judge Denise Casper blocked the Trump administration from deporting Ozturk and ordered the administration to respond by Tuesday to Ozturk’s legal challenge (now aided by the ACLU) to her detention.
The video of the arrest spurred tidal waves of online cheering. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about the case while traveling in Guyana, he justified revoking Ozturk’s visa:
If you apply for a visa… and you tell us that the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds but because you want to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos—we’re not giving you that visa.
Rubio added: “It’s crazy—stupid, even—for any country to let people in who say, ‘I’m going to your universities to riot, take over libraries, and harass people.’ We gave you a visa to study and earn a degree—not to become a social activist tearing up our campuses.”
Rubio promised: “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away the
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