The message is clear: Think twice about what you say or write, because we can grab you at any time.
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The pace quickens on efforts by the Trump administration to clamp down on dissent.
On Wednesday, Tufts University doctoral student and Fulbright scholarship winner Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national, was grabbed by masked plainclothes agents on the streets of Boston and then apparently hustled off to detention in Louisiana.
The apparent basis for this was an op-ed she co-authored that called on the administration of her university to meaningfully deal with some resolutions that the Tufts Community Union Senate (TCUS) had passed.
Crucially, the TCUS wanted the university to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments in companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel, and divest from them. To justify these actions, Ozturk et al. noted in their op-ed that “credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.”
Whatever one’s views on Israel and Palestine, it’s hard to see any justification for forcibly apprehending someone in broad daylight for expressing their opinion — whether or not that person is a US citizen. This brief video, taken by a surveillance camera, clearly shows the incident. It is not hard — with just a modicum of the empathy that Elon Musk has assured us is such a problem for Western culture — to see your loved ones or yourself in this young woman’s place.
She is cuffed and hustled off by state agents to incarceration in another state. Literally seconds after she is bundled into a large, black unmarked vehicle, a male student walks right past the spot where she was abducted — obviously unaware that anything unusual had taken place. The quietness of it all only adds to the chill. It feels like this could happen anywhere to anyone for any reason, or for no reason.
A day later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to justify the government’s actions.
“We revoked her visa,” he told reporters. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses. If we’ve given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away.”
Rubio referenced several activities, like vandalizing universities, taking over buildings, and harassing students — and implied that Ozturk was engaged in them. However, the administration has not presented any evidence that this was the case.
If the government’s purpose was to remove a foreigner who was a perceived threat of some kind, the authorities could easily have notified her that she must leave the country. That they instead chose the most harrowing public action suggests that the real purpose was to send a wider message — and to instill fear in others.
The message is clear: Think twice about what you say or write, because we can grab you at any time.
But don’t just take our word for it: Watch the short video of Ozturk’s arrest and read her brief editorial to decide for yourself if her treatment matches the purported crime, and if this is the kind of government you want looking out for your rights and those of your fellow Americans.
