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ICE’s viral arrest of a Tufts University student, briefly explained
A foreign student who coauthored an op-ed was arrested and put in deportation proceedings.
Patrick Reis was the senior politics and ideas editor at Vox. He previously worked at Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, Politico, National Journal, and Seattle’s Real Change News. As a reporter and editor, he has worked on coverage of campaign politics, economic policy, the federal death penalty, climate change, financial regulation, and homelessness.
Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focused on the Trump administration’s attempt to deport a foreign student without trial, seemingly as a punishment for her political views.
What’s the latest? On Tuesday, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside Boston arrested Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national and Tufts University PhD student who was in the US legally on a student visa. ICE is holding Öztürk in a Louisiana facility and plans to deport her. Öztürk’s lawyers have sued to stop the deportation, and the case is working its way through the courts.
Why is the administration trying to deport Öztürk? So far, the administration has not charged Öztürk with a crime nor presented any evidence that she engaged in criminal activity.
Öztürk last year co-authored an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that he revoked her visa because of her participation in the anti-Gaza war movement. Rubio said the movement had engaged in vandalism and other crimes, but he did not say Öztürk was involved.
Is this an isolated incident? The case is very similar to that of Mahmoud Khalil, and more arrests may be coming: Rubio suggested Thursday that he’d revoked around 300 student visas on similar grounds.
Can the administration do this? The administration argues that a 1952 immigration law gives Rubio the right to revoke the green card of any immigrant that he considers a threat to national security or acting against the interest of the United States. The courts will weigh that claim’s validity.
What’s the big picture? The Trump administration has found another way to use the federal government to punish people for their political views. If Öztürk is being punished for some other reason, it’s incumbent on the government to publicly make that case. But so far, they haven’t felt the need to try. That’s a troubling sign for the civil liberties of immigrants, and for everyone else as well.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
I know not everyone agrees, but I think it’s highly likely that there’s alien life awaiting us in space. And so I devoured this episode of Vox’s Unexplainable podcast about the search for extraterrestrials. You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and elsewhere. But given how beautiful life on this planet is, might I recommend listening to it outside? Thanks for reading. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.
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