Judge To ICE: No, You Can’t Actually Kidnap Students For Writing Op-Eds

Legal Issues

from the this-detention-cannot-stand dept

Correction/Update: In this original article, I included a quote from DHS that I thought was in response to today’s order, which implied DHS believed they could still detain Ozturk, but it appears it was in response to the earlier ruling on Wednesday when she was first ordered to be transferred. We have removed that quote and apologize for the confusion.

There have been so many absolutely crazy stories in the first few months of the second Trump administration, but the story of federal agents kidnapping Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk entirely over a fairly boring op-ed she co-authored criticizing the Tufts administration still stands out for its utter pointlessness. It is extreme even when compared to the many other extreme and horrific immigration efforts engaged in by this administration.

Get this, though: it turns out that kidnapping celebrated foreign PhD students in broad daylight for writing mild criticism of their own university is not even remotely constitutional or reasonable.

Thankfully, a judge has now freed her and made it quite clear that nothing the government is weakly arguing in this case makes any sense at all.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions, who is presiding over the case, said at the conclusion of Friday’s bail hearing that Ozturk raised “very substantial” and “very significant” claims that her First Amendment and due process rights were violated when she was taken into custody following the revocation of her student visa in March.

“Her continued detention cannot stand,” he said.

Not that it should matter — because it doesn’t — but at least with many of the other people the administration has targeted, they could craft some sort of (absurd) rationale for why they did what they did. Here there was none. Just that she once co-authored a fairly benign op-ed.

Let’s be clear about what happened here: A Fulbright scholar wrote something that made someone in the administration sad, and their response was to send masked men to make her disappear. Cool system we’ve got! Very normal democracy stuff. America. Land of the free.

Everything about how they treated her was cruel and unusual. Obviously, punishing her for her speech is a blatant First Amendment violation. But even if the government wanted to argue that she was no longer welcome in this country (which is absurd, given that she’s a Fulbright scholar doing really useful child development work, including how to make sure kids have more prosocial uses of the internet and technology), they could have alerted her that her student visa was being revoked, and given her a time period in which she’d need to leave the country.

They didn’t do that. They just sent masked, non-uniformed people to kidnap her off the street. Then they quickly moved her out of Massachusetts to Vermont, and then from Vermont to Louisiana. Then, while detained in Louisiana, they refused to give her the asthma medication she relied on, and it was reported that the stress was causing regular and dangerous asthma attacks.

Just to recap: Write op-ed → get black-bagged by unidentified agents → get shuffled across multiple states → be denied life-saving medication. Is this the “efficient government processing” DOGE has been promising?

Earlier today, federal district court Judge William Sessions ruled that she was unlawfully detained and needed to be released immediately on her own recognizance. On top of that, Judge Sessions rejected the government’s demand that her travel be restricted if she was released.

During the hearing today, Ozturk testified remotely (via Zoom) and told her story, which revealed that she seems like exactly the kind of serious, thoughtful, caring student the US should want more of here. After she was done testifying, when another witness was testifying, Ozturk had to be excused as she was hit with another asthma attack.

The US government barely put up a fight. It was almost as if the DOJ lawyers knew they fucked up badly in this case. They didn’t admit to fucking up, but they did little to present a case. No witnesses. Barely any questioning of the other side. When they presented their side, they basically presented silly technical legal arguments that the Vermont court doesn’t have jurisdiction over Ozturk.

Nothing says “we’re on solid legal ground” quite like arguing that the court can’t determine whether your kidnapping was legal because you cleverly moved your victim to a different state. Checkmate, due process!

The judge then ruled from the bench that even though there’s a very high bar with a “difficult burden” to reach to have her ordered released, in Ozturk’s case she cleared that high bar. He directly called out that, despite having the opportunity to present more evidence, the DOJ only had the co-authored op-ed, which raised serious First Amendment issues, saying that it appears that Ozturk was detained for her protected expression.

He also called out the due process issues with her kidnapping appearing to be punitive, rather than for any legitimate reason. Add to that the asthma attacks and the horrific and cruel conditions in which she has been kept (which would continue to damage her health if unchanged) and he ordered her released immediately.

On top of that, as mentioned, the court rejected the DOJ’s request for travel restrictions, noting that it presented no evidence that Ozturk was a “flight risk,” while Ozturk and her lawyers presented plenty of evidence that she’s a part of the Tufts community and eagerly hoping to finish her PhD there. The judge also noted that, as a PhD student, she likely needs to be able to travel to attend conferences and such.

There are some minor conditions around checking in with the Burlington Center for Justice, which will “supervise” her release and provide reports to the US government.

There will be more in this case later, but this was a complete and total win for Ozturk, who has had to suffer for no good reason for the past six weeks after being kidnapped off the street by the US government for obviously protected speech.

This is a good result in a terrible and shameful event from the current administration.

And, on that note, I will again highlight that almost none of the usual voices who spent the last decade plus screaming about “free speech on campus” said anything about Ozturk being literally kidnapped by the federal government over her speech on campus. Bari Weiss’s publication put out an unsigned editorial piece complaining that there wasn’t enough public evidence in the case (though suggesting they wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Ozturk “coordinated their activism with Hamas, or encouraged or participated in riots”) but still claiming that Marco Rubio’s statement about taking away visas for op-eds was “common sense.”

Ah yes, “common sense” — that thing where the government can kidnap you for writing an op-ed. Just like the Founding Fathers intended.

Weiss was even able to interview Rubio just a few weeks later, and did ask him a softball question about the deportations (in general) with no follow up:

WEISS:  One of the things the President and you have done in the past 90-something days – it feels like it’s been a lot longer than that – (laughter) – has been to successfully – I cannot even imagine how long it’s felt for you – has been to successfully close the southern border.  And yet, that story has been just totally overtaken with the story of some of these individual deportations that have captured the national conversation and that many people, even people that voted for Trump, are opposed to.   

And so I want to just ask you a bigger question, which is:  What message is the President trying to send with these deportations?  There’s – is it about deterring people from coming?  Or is it about terrifying people that have been here for years, that have paid taxes for many, many years, and might even have American children?  Should they be scared of deportation?  Like what is the message that the President and the State Department is trying to send?  

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, so two things.  The State Department isn’t involved necessarily in the issue of migratory enforcement.  We’re involved in making sure that foreign countries take back the citizens that are in our country illegally of their countries.  So I would say two things.   

Number one, mass migration is almost entirely based on an incentive system.  People were coming to this country under Joe Biden because they knew if they got to the border and claimed asylum, said these magic words, they would be allowed to come in and they would be allowed to stay – almost 90 percent success rate if you said the magic words, so people were coming.   

Now they know that if they come they won’t get to stay, and they’ve stopped coming, which is why it’s the most secure border we’ve had in modern history.  And in fact, we’ve seen a new phenomenon, which is people that were on their way here sort of do a U-turn and go back.  We’ve seen that play out.  And that’s an enormous achievement, because it stops the problem. 

That still leaves us with a fundamental challenge, and that is that we have in this country millions of people – some who have been here many years, some who have been here for a year and a half or two – who are unlawfully in the United States.  And it’s this simple:  If you say the speed zone is 70 miles an hour, but people know they’re not going to get a ticket unless they go 90 miles an hour, no one’s going to drive under the speed limit.  You have to have laws, and laws have to be enforced.  If you don’t enforce your laws, then your laws become meaningless.  And that’s what’s happened in this country over the last 20 years.  We were not enforcing our immigration laws, and now we are.   

Obviously, they’re going to prioritize the most dangerous people, dangerous criminals.  If you look at the manifest of these flights of people that are being deported, these are some of the most vile human beings imaginable that we’re getting out of our country – sex offenders, rapists, killers.  That’s who we’re prioritizing being sent out.   

But let there be no doubt we have immigration laws, and if you are in violation of those immigration laws, you have no right to be in the country.  Now, some will choose to leave voluntarily; others may get caught up and be forced to leave.  But we are – they are prioritizing the most dangerous.   

But that said, you have to have – there’s no point in having immigration laws if you have no intent to enforce them.  

WEISS:  Okay, let’s talk about Iran.

Yeah, top-notch journalism there. You ask a general question that lets him dance around. He even claims (falsely) that the US wasn’t enforcing immigration laws before, and also that they’re prioritizing “the most vile human beings imaginable.” That’s a perfect opening to ask about cases like Ozturk. Who is not vile. Is not a criminal. Was here legally. And was kidnapped for her speech.

But, no, “let’s talk about Iran.”

The hypocrisy is blindingly obvious. The same people who built careers defending the right of provocateurs to speak on campus are suddenly silent when a student is literally disappeared by the government for co-writing a mild op-ed. Their selective outrage reveals that for many self-proclaimed “free speech warriors,” the principle was never about free expression — it was about protecting specific political viewpoints.

How about we talk about the person who was here entirely legally, who did nothing wrong, was a Fulbright scholar studying how to make kids use the internet better, and who co-authored a single op-ed gently criticizing the Tufts administration (not the US government) and was kidnapped by masked federal officials (not in uniform) in broad daylight, and then renditioned across the country, then treated cruelly and inhumanely, putting her own health at risk.

Thankfully, Ozturk should now be free, but it was not with any help from some of the people who built their careers claiming to support free speech on campus.

The Ozturk case may be just one example of many, but it was an important test case for whether this administration could get away with explicitly punishing even the most mild speech it doesn’t like through extrajudicial means. Today, at least, the answer was no — but the fact that they’ve been doing this to hundreds of people should terrify everyone who claims to care about constitutional rights.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 5th amendment, dhs, due process, free speech, immigration, kidnapping, marco rubio, rumeysa ozturk, student visas, tricia mclaughlin, william sessions