Latest news with #RumeysaOzturk
Yahoo
7 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
The Video of Rumeysa Ozturk Being Detained by ICE Was Publicized By a Community Defense Network
Anadolu/Getty Images Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue Take On March 25, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Rumeysa Ozturk as she walked down the street in the Boston suburb of Somerville. Ozturk is in the United States legally on a student visa and is by most accounts model citizen — a Fulbright scholar, PhD student at Tufts University, and, as argued by her lawyers, guilty of nothing. Her crime, according to the Trump administration, seems to be supporting Palestine. Ozturk's arrest is sensational in the literal sense, and the video is in many ways traumatic to watch. The masked agents appear out of nowhere, encircle the academic, and put her in handcuffs as she asks what's happening. Although it echoes the tactics we're seeing and hearing about ICE arrests all over the country, these stories are usually shared by word of mouth in rumors or whispers among neighbors. But Ozturk's situation stands out because we can watch it. That's because, as her detention was happening, another student called a community watch hotline that had started operating that week. 'He said, 'Someone's being kidnapped, someone's being kidnapped,'' recalled Danny Timpona, the LUCE Hotline operator who took the call. The hotline team dispatched 'verifiers' in Somerville — people trained to verify hotline calls and social media rumors of ICE's presence in a given area — who arrived within five minutes. They met with the caller, who was unsure who had taken Ozturk. The volunteers began knocking on doors and talking to neighbors, trying to find out if anyone might have information on what had happened, and also to calm any panic by giving out information about the hotline. A neighbor turned over the video, reportedly captured by a home security camera, that has now been seen by millions. Those volunteers are some of the more than 750 who have been trained in the last six weeks at 'community hubs' in over a dozen cities across the state, where 50 hotline operators with member groups of the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts are now answering calls in five languages. ('LUCE' connotes 'shining a light,' in Latin, a language familiar to the region's large Catholic immigrant population.) And they're providing other resources as well. Later in the week, the group gave know-your-rights training to more than 100 Tufts students and community members. Timpona credits a 40-page Google Doc that was published just Donald Trump was inaugurated. LUCE is connecting immigrant community groups, prison abolition organizations, legal services, parent groups, and faith-based organizations. 'Our coalition is rooted in the idea that we refuse to leave anyone behind because of their marginalized identity,' shares Jaya Savita, director of the Asian Pacific Islanders Civic Action Network and a member of the LUCE Network. 'The hotline and ICE Watch resource is one of many ways we are empowering allies and impacted community members. We recognize that in order to build people power, we need to train, empower, and equip our communities and allies.' Most of the group's tactics, from the hotline dispatch system to neighborhood-based rights workshops, are modeled on those our team at Siembra NC used to organize immigrant workers and community members in North Carolina during Trump's first term. And they're not the only ones coming together to create new defense networks. Before his reelection, Trump made clear what he was going to do: demonize Latinos and all immigrants and use the threats of raids and deportation to destroy families and communities, keeping us all scared, demoralized, and hidden. He and his billionaire friends would continue stripping away our rights, gutting public services, and harming working people. We knew the playbook he'd run since 2016, so we wrote our own. Siembra NC's Defend and Recruit playbook outlines the tools we developed during the first Trump presidency and the ways we defended immigrants in our community and built a powerful movement in North Carolina. Since February, over 6,000 people have downloaded it, and hundreds of people around the country have joined in-person and online trainings. Among them were LUCE Hotline's coordination team, who say they spent hours consulting with our organizing coaches before they set up their systems. 'It was harder than we had expected getting people to set a vision and follow through,' Timpona said. 'Even after being trained, volunteers needed a lot of coaching to do things like go up and ask questions of federal agents making arrests.' ICE says they arrested nearly 400 people in Massachusetts in the two weeks the hotline started receiving calls. 'It has been so helpful to get support from other groups just starting.' The Defend & Recruit Network includes groups along the East Coast all the way to Florida, Texas, across Michigan and Wisconsin, and into Washington and California. We're experimenting with new strategies that engage people to defend those targeted, while also building a practice of recruitment into our organizing. We just published a toolkit for students resisting detentions like Ozturk's. Although there are extreme differences in our approaches and risks depending on local factors and our personal and group identities, there's still so much we can strategize about. Building these connections helps the work feel less isolating, less impossible, as some groups in red states like Ohio and Tennessee have shared on peer learning calls. By sharing these resources, we've received dozens more in return. We're collating these community-provided resources alongside our own tools and training. We've also built customizable resources, logos, toolkits, and produced how-to videos and other materials so you can do this work in your community. It is more important than ever: ICE is escalating its raids and targeting more people — immigration activists, Palestine supporters, parents, workers, and students. Many in our communities are looking for ways to defend our rights, even if it feels like those rights are eroding in real time. Defend & Recruit organizers have talked to people all over the country who are leading this work. Some are brand new, wanting to step up and do something in today's political chaos to support neighbors and families, while others have decades of wisdom to share from their lifetime in the fight. When we asked at a recent online training how many new local groups were forming solely because of immigration defense, dozens of people put their hands up. We've created spaces to troubleshoot common problems and share what we've learned, alongside receiving individual support. Groups in St. Louis; Ulster, New York; and Austin, Texas have met together and with our organizing coaches to build their own hotlines and ICE Watch programs. In North Carolina, we're building new ways for allies to join our fight and defend communities. After hearing from employers who wanted to respond to federal agents' warrantless arrests, we're now inviting them to become Fourth Amendment Workplaces that stand up for the Constitution. We know that the far right thrives when we are scared and alone. And we know that none of us are experts in exactly what will work in today's political landscape as Trump continues to shift his tactics. The administration is employing raids at workplaces, enabling abusive employers to exploit their workers further, and targeting immigrants at schools and places of worship. They're going after green card holders and temporary visa holders, and even using an 18th-century law to deport people to an El Salvadoran prison. Their actions are unprecedented, so the way we defend our people must change, too. We have legal rights in these situations and ways we can respond — if we're ready. Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue Want more Teen Vogue immigration coverage? The School Shooting That History Forgot I Was Kidnapped After Coming to the U.S. Seeking Asylum Ronald Reagan Sucked, Actually The White Supremacist 'Great Replacement Theory' Has Deep Roots


The National
28-05-2025
- General
- The National
US to deny visas to officials who censor Americans' opinions
Foreign officials who censor social media postings by Americans will be denied US visas, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday. Mr Rubio said the decision is a way of protecting free speech guaranteed by the US Constitution, but it also comes as he draws scrutiny for his own attempts to regulate what some people in the country are allowed to say about the war in Gaza. He said he was acting against foreign officials who have taken 'flagrant censorship actions' against US technology companies and citizens. 'I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States,' Mr Rubio said in a statement. 'It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on US citizens or US residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on US soil." Mr Rubio's State Department has revoked the visas of hundreds of students who protested against Israel and the Gaza war last year, claiming the pro-Palestinian protesters are anti-Semitic or ' lunatics '. On Tuesday, the State Department paused all new foreign student interviews at US embassies and consulates as it weighs requiring the vetting of applicants' social media histories. Among those targeted by the Trump administration are Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University who last year co-wrote an opinion piece in a student newspaper criticising Tufts's response to calls to divest from companies with Israel ties and to 'acknowledge the Palestinian genocide'. Wednesday's action comes after Mr Rubio last week told politicians that he was weighing sanctions against Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes. The judge last year ordered the suspension of X in Brazil during a dispute over accounts that allegedly spread misinformation. X's owner, Elon Musk, was President Donald Trump 's leading financial donor last year and worked alongside him this year, slashing government jobs.


Fox News
28-05-2025
- General
- Fox News
Government's crackdown on Mahmoud Khalil's pro-Palestinian free speech threatens First Amendment protections
For over two months, the government has been targeting international students and scholars for arrest, detention and deportation based on their political views. Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and prominent advocate for Palestinian rights at Columbia University, was the first of these. He was taken from his home and detained 1,500 miles away from his family. He has been in detention since early March and was forced to miss the birth of his first child, solely because of his political beliefs. He isn't the only one. Other students and scholars, like Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Dr. Badar Khan Suri, have been arrested and detained, despite having committed no crime and having valid immigration status. This attempt by the government to suppress dissenting opinions is unconstitutional, and if it succeeds in court, it sets a troubling precedent that will impact all of us, citizens and noncitizens alike. But the First Amendment exists precisely to stop the government from punishing people for their political views. To justify this brazen attack on free speech, the government is citing the Immigration and Nationality Act's "Foreign Policy Ground." The law states that a noncitizen is deportable if the Secretary of State believes their "presence or activities" in the country would have "potentially serious foreign policy consequences for the United States." But it explicitly prohibits deportation because of someone's views and associations, except in extreme cases such as those involving high-level foreign officials, and Congress made clear that "this authority would be used sparingly and not merely because there is a likelihood that an alien will make critical remarks about the United States or its policies." This law is almost never invoked. In its court filings, the government has identified only five previous instances in which it has been used to remove noncitizens over the past three decades. In all that time, the law has never been cited to detain or deport anyone for their political beliefs – until it was used against Khalil. Since then, the government has used it to argue that it has unlimited discretion to detain and deport any noncitizen whom the government considers a foreign policy risk for any reason – and that the courts are powerless to review its decisions, even if they violate the First Amendment. In Khalil's case, and several others, the only evidence the government has cited in support of its foreign policy claims is constitutionally protected speech about Israel and Palestine. According to Deputy DHS Secretary Troy Edgar, Khalil was targeted for "put[ting] himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity." When asked if "any criticism of the Israeli government," "any criticism of the United States," "any criticism of the government" or "protesting" are deportable offenses, Mr. Edgar did not provide a direct answer. Instead, he stated if Mr. Khalil admitted an intention to "go and protest" when he had initially applied for a student visa, "we would have never let him into the country." Similarly, Ozturk's student visa was targeted because government officials didn't like the op-ed she co-wrote in the Tufts University student newspaper. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this kind of advocacy was "creating a ruckus" that justified her removal from the country. And so, after her visa was secretly revoked, she was snatched off the streets of Somerville, Mass., by masked, plainclothes ICE agents, transported across multiple states overnight, and thrown into a detention facility in Louisiana – where she remained for six weeks until another court ordered her release. The government has tried to undermine the Constitution in these cases by arguing that the First Amendment does not apply to noncitizens, but that's just wrong. The Supreme Court recognized 80 years ago that "freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country." That freedom protects all of us – citizens and noncitizens alike – from government officials who would abuse their power to suppress criticism. Fortunately, the federal courts are beginning to stand up to these flagrant First Amendment violations. Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Badar Khan Suri have all been released on bail while their cases proceed. As the federal court in Mahdawi's case recognized when it ordered his release, it is "extraordinary" that "[l]egal residents—not charged with crimes or misconduct—are being arrested and threatened with deportation for stating their views on the political issues of the day." However, Mahmoud Khalil is still being held in Louisiana, far away from his wife and newborn son, as his request for release remains pending. Regardless of what you think about Israel or Palestine, we should all defend our First Amendment right to free speech. Because if freedom of speech means anything, it means the government can't arrest you, detain you for weeks or months on end, and remove you from the country just because it doesn't like what you have to say.


USA Today
24-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
I joked about getting deported. In Trump's America, it's not funny.
I joked about getting deported. In Trump's America, it's not funny. | Opinion The secretary of State, under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, can trigger the deportation of any noncitizen if their presence is deemed harmful to U.S. foreign policy interests. Show Caption Hide Caption Moment Tufts University student was detained caught on security camera The moment Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE was captured on a home security camera. When times are tough, I like to remind myself that I live in a country where I'm protected by an ironclad constitution from arrest without charge. Whatever hardships arise, at least I cannot be snatched up by government henchmen or hooded goons because of something I said, or wrote. Not without redress. Not without lawsuits, news coverage, protests, firings or prosecution for abuses of power – the guardrails of American freedom. That assurance is simply not available in much of the world. And the certainty of those protections, right here in the land of the free, seems to be fading in and out like the photograph of Marty McFly's siblings in 'Back to the Future.' Eerie familiarity My parents were not born in a place where they were free to have their say. Political imprisonment and suppression of dissent were common where they grew up in Syria, much like many countries from which families emigrate to the U.S. I'd be lying if I said that was the reason my parents immigrated. Their motivations were more about economic opportunity – the chance to raise children in a place where their futures would be secure. But freedom of speech, due process rights and the unequivocal rule of law aren't just added perks. They are the foundations on which the world's strongest economy was built. So I have a certain duty to deeply appreciate and make the best of what my parents did for me: leaving their families behind, walking away from everyone and everything they knew and traveling to the opposite end of the world to give me a life of freedom and opportunity. But over the last two months, images of hooded and masked agents of the United States government stalking and arresting students – apparently for their political views – has thrown every notion of American comfort and security I've ever had into question. Meanwhile, there's strange new leadership back in Syria, too. It's a mess. Decades of dictatorship have finally given way to a fledging new government that is trying to dismantle and rebuild myriad government institutions from the ground up. The country is several years away from its next election. Arrests with ambiguous justification that may be political in nature are still common. And the country's new leaders are struggling to build and hold the trust of the populace every step of the way. Sounds familiar. Far too familiar. Opinion: This liberal influencer calls Democrats 'smug, disinterested.' He's right. My April Fools' ICE prank went wrong It was a silly, lighthearted joke, I thought. 'Guys, there are ICE agents outside the building asking about me. What do I do? Hide me!' It was April Fools' Day. I was in the mood for some pranking, and a little social experimentation. I'm a Michigan-born U.S. citizen. Most of my friends and co-workers – certainly my family members – know that. It would be absurd, previously, to imagine Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to be on the hunt for little old me. But the prank was fairly consistently met with genuine horror. Some were angry with me afterward. And then the reality set in. This is no joke. Opinion: Trump's detention policies hurt kids. We know, we're pediatricians. In addition to seeking comfort in the Constitution, I cope with calamity by turning to humor, and I make no apologies for the prank. But the joke didn't land, for good reason. Our president has sought to end birthright citizenship and has expressed interest in sending 'homegrowns' – whatever that means – to a prison in El Salvador. Citizens being targeted by U.S. immigration agents is no longer such a farfetched possibility. It all started with Mahmoud Khalil It started with Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump Administration's inaugural political detainee, a legal permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen who was arrested because he organized and participated in protests at Columbia University. The secretary of State, under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, can trigger the deportation of any non-citizen if their presence is deemed harmful to U.S. foreign policy interests – a provision the Trump Administration is interpreting very loosely. The case is making its way through the courts, but Khalil, who's never been charged with a crime, is still behind bars, more than 50 days after his March 9 warrantless arrest. He missed the birth of his first child during his inexplicably lengthy detention. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a memo seeking to make Khalil deportable despite his permanent resident status, declared 'I have determined that the activities and presence of these aliens in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.' The memo accused Khalil of 'condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States.' The government has not elaborated on its characterization of antisemitic conduct. The 1952 law that grants Rubio the authority to make such a determination was once declared unconstitutional, back in 1996. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, under President Bill Clinton, was seeking to extradite Mario Ruiz Massieu to Mexico, despite multiple court rulings that prosecutors lacked probable cause to suggest Massieu had engaged in criminal activity. 'Absent a meaningful opportunity to be heard, the Secretary of State's unreviewable and concededly 'unfettered discretion' to deprive an alien, who lawfully entered this country, of his or her liberty to the extent exemplified by this case is, in this court's view, unconstitutional,' wrote U.S. District Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Yes, that's President Donald Trump's late sister. Barry's ruling was overturned months later by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in an opinion written by Samuel Alito, now a U.S. Supreme Court justice, who found that the district court lacked jurisdiction on the matter: 'If plaintiff wished to challenge the efforts to deport him, he was required to exhaust available administrative remedies (in immigration court) and then petition for review in this court.' In 1999, after four years of awaiting a resolution while under house arrest, Ruiz Massieu killed himself. In 1944, the Supreme Court said internment camps were constitutional Another heartbreaking historic court ruling seems relevant to the abhorrent trend of indefinitely detaining immigrants. In the 1944 case Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold the constitutionality of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Dissenting Justice Frank Murphy, a former Detroit mayor and Michigan governor, found the ruling abhorrent. 'This exclusion of 'all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien,' from the Pacific Coast area on a plea of military necessity in the absence of martial law ought not to be approved. Such exclusion goes over 'the very brink of constitutional power,' and falls into the ugly abyss of racism,' Murphy wrote in his dissent. 'To infer that examples of individual disloyalty prove group disloyalty and justify discriminatory action against the entire group is to deny that, under our system of law, individual guilt is the sole basis for deprivation of rights. Moreover, this inference, which is at the very heart of the evacuation orders, has been used in support of the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy. 'To give constitutional sanction to that inference in this case, however well-intentioned may have been the military command on the Pacific Coast, is to adopt one of the cruelest of the rationales used by our enemies to destroy the dignity of the individual and to encourage and open the door to discriminatory actions against other minority groups in the passions of tomorrow.' Immigrants with legal status are being snatched Since Khalil's March arrest, more immigrants with legal status have been snatched from their communities and face indefinite detention pending potential deportation. Rumeysa Ozturk, an international student from Turkey who co-wrote an op-ed for the school newspaper at Tuft's University, was arrested March 25 by plainclothes agents while walking in a Boston suburb. 'We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist, to tear up our university campuses,' Rubio told reporters after the arrest. Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian international student who took part in protests last year at Columbia University, was taken into custody at a Vermont immigration office after being summoned for what he initially hoped would be a final interview before gaining U.S. citizenship. And Rubio moved to revoke the visas of at least 1,000 international students, including students at least five colleges in Michigan. In the face of numerous lawsuits filed by students, with courts showing signs of losing patience with the administration, the administration reversed course on those revocations last week. But the damage has been done. Some of the students whose visas were threatened have already left the country. And the images of three foreign students being handcuffed and hauled away to immigration detention centers, where they remain, are sure to discourage families across the world from sending their children to study in the U.S. As the administration explores how far it can go, many, like my co-workers on April Fools' Day, are fearfully anticipating word that a rabble-rousing U.S. citizen has been plucked from their community and threatened with deportation. Amir Makled got a taste of what that might be like earlier this month. The Detroit-born civil rights attorney, who is representing a University of Michigan student charged with resisting arrest during student protests last year, was detained for nearly two hours at Detroit Metro Airport on April 6 as he returned from a family trip to the Dominican Republic. 'I was targeted because of the work I was engaged in,' Makled told me. '… It could not have been a routine search. They were waiting for me. They knew I was an attorney. They knew my client list. They were telling me about me.' Federal agents demanded, without warrant, to search Makled's cellphone. He refused, but ultimately allowed the agents to view his contacts, leading to his release. He regrets making that concession. 'In hindsight, now I know a lot more about how far they can go,' Makled said. He believes the government needs an actual indication of a real national security threat to confiscate a traveler's phone. Makled wears the experience like a badge of honor, proud to be in a position to fight for upholding civil rights. 'I'm not going to be intimidated in this setting," he said. "This is not something that puts me in a position of being scared." He is, however, afraid for the future of constitutional civil rights in the U.S. 'This is the death of democracy and due process,' he said. 'The message they're sending is: 'Stay quiet, or else.' This is exactly how free speech gets killed.' We have to to be the guardrails of our own rights There are those who are indeed choosing to stay quiet, to store away their soapboxes and protest signs and wait for safer times. And there are those, like Makled, who are only getting more fired up to fight. It's the latter who'll keep our constitutional rights from fading out of the picture. It'll be the lawyers with the courage to fight for their own rights and those of their clients in the face of unprecedented federal retaliation against opposing attorneys. It'll be the preachers, educators and block club leaders who are willing to go out on a limb to inform and warn their communities of the threats coming from the White House. It'll be the local elected officials who manage to find balance between fighting back and making compromises to protect municipal budgets from federal cuts. It'll be the remaining federal workers who risk their jobs to document everything they possibly can. And yes, it will be those protest activists, of all sorts and stripes and causes, of varying degrees of righteousness and courage, who demonstrate despite being monitored and targeted like never before. Because we are the guardrails. Our laws, it seems, can't stand alone. We the people, who believe in the Constitution, need to be the ones who keep our rights intact. Those of us who cannot afford to take our constitutional rights for granted, because they're being pressed to their limits, those who actively cherish and are willing to work to protect free speech and due process – we must be the guardrails. Khalil AlHajal is deputy editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, where this column originally published. Contact: kalhajal@


Washington Post
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
We're international students at Harvard. We're afraid to write this. But we have to speak up.
Writing this letter carries a great deal of personal risk for all of us. The ordeals of Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil make clear that the Trump administration does not hesitate to snatch international students off the streets and put them in detention facilities for speaking up. But we refuse to silence ourselves at a time when our community is under attack. We can't afford to be silent. Neither can Harvard.