For Rümeysa Öztürk, March 25 should have been a perfect day. The sun was shining and the Turkish graduate student planned to break her Ramadan fast with friends in Somerville, Mass. She never made it to dinner.
As Öztürk departed from her off-campus apartment, the 30-year-old Fulbright Scholar was detained by an entourage of black-clad agents from the Department of Homeland Security. In a minute-long video captured by nearby security cameras, Öztürk was shown to be handcuffed and marched away, leaving any semblance of normalcy on the sidewalk behind her.
Öztürk, who was pursuing a doctoral degree in Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University prior to her arrest, is only one in a disturbing series of student deportations under the Trump administration. The crackdown began on March 8, when pro-Palestinian activist and former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was detained at his home in New York City and moved to an ICE detention center in Louisiana. At the time, Khalil had a valid green card and his wife, an American citizen, was eight months pregnant.
Since then, the alarming phenomenon has spread nationwide, impacting nearly 1,700 students at Columbia, Stanford and numerous other institutions. Some, like Öztürk and Khalil, have been detained by immigration officials. Others have gone into hiding or “self-deported” due to the resounding fear of arrest.
At a glance, the individual cases seem disconnected, no more than a series of moves in Trump’s ongoing war on immigration. However, when one looks closer, many of the students whose visas have been revoked share one remarkable similarity: association with the pro-Palestine movement.
Khalil, of course, was a leader of the cause during his time as a graduate student at Columbia. Yunseo Chung, a Columbia undergraduate whose visa was revoked on March 10, and Momodou Taal, a Cornell graduate student who has fled the country, were members of similar protest groups. Özturk’s involvement is much less substantial, though she did co-author an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper demanding that the school recognize Palestinian oppression and cut financial ties with Israel.
While the administration has yet to share its reasoning in some of the visa revocations, many of the cases are brought under an obscure clause of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that “an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
Though the law has never been challenged in the Supreme Court, a 1996 lower court ruling from Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, Trump’s elder sister, found it unconstitutional. In the ruling, she stated that the passage affords far too much power to the Secretary of State and poses a major risk to the freedom and futures of immigrants, even those who live in the country legally. So long as this law remains in place, immigrants must live in fear, terrified that they may soon meet Öztürk or Khalil’s fate.
Judge Trump Barry’s decision closely echoes the claims of the clause’s modern opponents, including the 19 state attorney generals who have urged a federal judge to block further visa cancellations: the wording is simply too vague, allowing for unfettered executive power over deportations and interfering with personal freedom in the process. After all, how can a democracy constructed on the idea of self-determination allow a single man, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to determine the futures of the nearly 48 million immigrants in our country? That doesn’t sound like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to me.
More specific threats to freedom, namely those laid out in the Constitution, must also be taken into consideration. The First Amendment, a document which largely shapes our country’s democracy and legal process, sets aside five crucial rights: free speech, free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and the freedom to petition the government.
Was Khalil not exercising his Constitutional right to free speech and assembly when he participated in pro-Palestine protests at Columbia? Was Öztürk’s op-ed not protected under freedom of the press? America is built on the ideal of freedom. But if our country was truly free, participating in a protest or co-authoring an article in a student newspaper would not be considered a threat to national security.
Beyond the blatant constitutional violations, the detentions of Öztürk, Khalil and others set an unfortunate precedent for our colleges and universities, whose school environments are enriched by the presence of international students. By threatening the students’ ability to study in the United States, the Trump administration has jeopardized the incredible exchange of cultures and knowledge that occurs on America’s college campuses.
“For me, it’s pretty sad, because I feel like having a chance to study abroad is just amazing,” said Maëlys Wayaffe, a Belgian exchange student attending Summit High School. “You share cultures, languages, and I just think it’s a really great thing.”
Without international students, our universities will be missing a richness of perspectives that they cannot live without. These students remind us that the world is so much wider than the borders of the United States. They remind us that there is more to the pursuit of knowledge than simply reaffirming our own opinions. Perhaps the Trump administration could learn a valuable lesson from them.
The restriction of international students from our campuses is more than a threat to education—it directly undermines the ideals on which our nation is built. It is a threat to free speech and freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and the freedom to learn as we please. Khalil, Öztürk and the hundreds of other international students who have been threatened with deportation may not be citizens of our country, but we must protect them nonetheless. After all, if their fundamental freedoms are ignored, then what will prevent the administration from ignoring the freedom of all immigrants or, perhaps, all Americans?
