Foreign Student Persecution Imperils any American Who Advocates for Freedom
by James Bovard, April 16, 2025
“If it is known that authorities have power to coerce, few people will wait for actual coercion,” economist Friedrich Hayek wrote in the 1956 foreword to his 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek’s insight could be the Rosetta Stone for understanding the Trump administration’s censorship zealotry.
On March 25, six masked federal agents seized a Turkish graduate student on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. Rumeysa Ozturk—who was wearing a hijab—was a Fulbright scholar working on a doctorate at Tufts University. Ozturk was snatched up because she co-authored a student newspaper op-ed a year earlier that criticized Israel, as I discussed here on March 31 (“First They Came for the Op-Ed Writers”).
Secretary of State Marco Rubio denounced Ozturk as a “lunatic” and implied she was guilty of participating “in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos.” Ozturk was shuffled between detention facilities before being taken to Louisiana. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deport her without any judicial proceedings.
Ozturk’s student visa was secretly revoked several days before she was taken into custody. Did the Trump administration want a high-profile incident in order to deter any other students from writing op-eds or from protesting Middle East policies?
On Sunday night, the Washington Post detonated the Trump case against Ozturk by publishing extracts from a confidential State Department memo. Prior to Ozturk being seized outside of Boston, senior DHS official Andre Watson sent a memo to the State Department stating that, “OZTURK engaged in anti-Israel activism… Specifically, [Ozturk] co-authored an op-ed article” that “called for Tufts to ‘disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.’” But the State Department found that no federal agency had turned up any evidence that Ozturk “engaged in antisemitic activity or made public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization.” Despite Rubio’s vilification of Ozturk, the feds didn’t have squat on her.
DHS wanted Ozturk expelled from the U.S. under a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that entitles the Secretary of State to deport any foreigner if there are reasonable grounds to believe their presence has “adverse policy consequence for the United States.” But there was no such evidence for Ozturk, so the Trump administration instead used a legal authority under which the Secretary of State can deport anyone on his own decree—no evidence required.
Because of her op-ed criticizing Israel, Ozturk vanished into the federal detention system, moved from state to state so the Trump administration could avoid a habeas petition in federal court challenging her detention. She was forced to wear leg shackles and a chain around her waist. She has asthma and had several attacks so far in lockup. At the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, she sleeps with 23 other people in a cell meant for 14. “None of us are able to sleep through the night. They come into the cell often and walk around triggering the fluorescent lights. They shout in the cell to wake up those who work in the kitchen around 3:30 am each day,” she said. Ozturk stated that a federal officer told her: “We are not monsters. We do what the government tells us.” So, of course, federal officials are blameless for any rights that they violate.
Ozturk is one of the most high-profile seizures that Trump’s DHS has made of students who criticized Israeli policies in Gaza. Hundreds of student visas have been revoked and the Trump administration has floated proposals to prohibit all foreign students from attending American universities that fail to fully suppress criticism or protests against Israeli policies.
It would be the height of folly for Americans to presume they face no peril from entitling the feds to seize boundless power to punish students’ speech. Ozturk’s name was provided to the Trump administration by Betar—an organization that the Washington Post characterized as a “militant Zionist group.” US citizens are at risk as well. A spokesman for Betar declared: “We provided hundreds of names to the Trump administration of visa holders and naturalized Middle Easterners and foreigners” who have criticized Israeli policies. The Anti-Defamation League condemned Betar as an extremist organization in February.
Any precedent for blanket censorship will propagate like a covid virus. Many conservatives and libertarians may shrug off Ozturk’s degradation because they have no interest in criticizing the policies of foreign governments. But the Ozturk case hinges on collective guilt—on assuming that anyone who advocates a position is culpable for any crimes committed by any other advocate with the same view.
This was the tacit doctrine that the Biden administration used to legally scourge peaceful January 6 protestors who merely “paraded without a permit” through or near the US Capitol that day. Because a minority of January 6 protestors became violent, the FBI presumed that “trespassing plus thought crimes equal terrorism,” justifying harsh sentences for anyone at the scene (except for the undercover federal agents and informants).
What legal perils will pro-freedom protestors face in the coming years if the Ozturk rule is canonized, entitling federal officials to crush any disfavored opinion? Big-spending Democrats may consecrate Modern Monetary Theory and demonize anyone who criticizes the Federal Reserve. I took this “Kill the Central Bank” photo of Ron Paul supporters at a 2008 Capitol Hill event for his presidential campaign. If the same protestors had peacefully carried the same banner within a half mile of the Capitol on January 6, they likely would have been nailed on a bevy of federal charges. Many politicians have made stark their hatred of libertarians and freedom advocates. A federally-funded Fusion Center tagged Ron Paul supporters as potential terrorist suspects, and another federally-funded center sounded the alarm on anyone “reverent of individual liberty.”
As long as anyone is sitting in shackles in a federal detention center simply for writing an op-ed, freedom of speech is not safe for anyone in the United States. Will Ozturk’s persecution finally wake up people too confident that “it can never happen here”?
Deport all foreign students and don’t ever issue student visas again. Its not in the interest of American students. It dilutes the job market. Those who advocate for freedom of foreigners to steal our jobs should all be executed by the state. The young gneration are tired of you boomer hippies wanting to give out jobs away. Its time for you to move to a foreign country to be with your disgusting pets.
“Boomer hippies” wasn’t on my Bingo card this week. I did not write in vain.
“We are not monsters. We do what the government tells us.”
Irony lost. Those who carry out the criminal boss’s orders are monsters every bit as much as the boss is.
It’s distressing that so many cheer the thuggery you describe here. A tech podcaster, much of whose work I greatly respect, off-handedly referred to Mahmoud Khalil as a “Hamas terrorist” in a recent show. Deporticus Maximus, above, is more virulent in his language than most, but add a little water and you’d have what many would nod their heads at. I would wager that most of these could trace their own ancestry back to Europe in the not very distant past, but the attitude today seems to be, “I’ve got mine, now the rest of you can flog off.” Sad.
It is unfortunate how easily the latest targets have been dehumanized – at least in the eyes of many American zealots.
I agree with these sentiments. The author fails to recognize the distinction between citizens and non citizens. Only globalists see no difference.
Ummm…except she was a FOREIGNER with NO right to be here at all, much less engage in contentious political issues while taking a university admission away from an American student.
American citizens have been saying the exact same thing as her for DECADES and continue to do so to this very day without the same outcome as this FOREIGNER.
I think we have had enough foreigners for a few decades. It’s time to send all these graceless losers back to their homelands where they can enrich their own societies for a while. I think we’re all good and set for a LONG TIME for any more “cultural enrichment”.
Immolated Strawman: “Because a minority of January 6 protestors became violent”? FALSE!
Try “Deep state J6 operatives both incited and perpetrated brutal violence (publicly executing Ashli Babbet and Rosanne Boyland) to justify mass incarcination of otherwise peaceful and patriotic (and now liberated) protesters.”
Please show us any evidence that Trump Administration officials planted operatives to offer Hamas “material support” or false flag publicly executing anyone.
You won’t because you can’t. There is none (zero. nada. zilch.).
Try harder to avoid chasing your wild goose with a red herring around that immolated strawman argument.
She is very different from Jan 6 protesters, she isn’t an American. She isn’t even a resident. She is simply a guest here to get an education. She was granted a privilege that can be taken away at any time. She has no inherent right to be here, no inherent right to petition her government for a redress of grievance (because it isn’t her government), no inherent right to protest or assemble, no inherent right to speech here. No right to vote, or bear arms. She has no say in our government. This idea that any foreign national can arrive on our shores as a guest, angry, vulgar, rude, contemptuous of our culture, of our norms, of our customs. That they can insult our people, our nation, our dignity is preposterous. I am not about putting her in shackles. I am about telling her that your are FREE TO HOLD YOUR VALUES IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY BECAUSE YOUR COUNTRY IS NOT A PRISON. DEPORTATION IS NOT A PUNISHMENT IT IS SIMPLY RETURNING THINGS TO THE STATUS QUO. Send her home immediately and revoke her privileges
Millions have entered the US illegally, the Trump administration is supposed to get every deportation right. Our country has bin over run with the enemy of freedom which is Islam. America is in financial Peril. So to sort out the islamist that want freedom and the ones that our destruction , we do not have the time or the money. Radical Islam is a cancer that is spreading across the world