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This is an adapted excerpt from the March 26 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
While there is a lot of focus on the major scandals involving Donald Trump’s administration, it’s important we don’t lose sight of what’s happening inside this country, where we are witnessing the federal government snatch people right off the streets for their political speech. The latest, most chilling example of that happened Tuesday outside of Boston, when Rumeysa Ozturk, a Ph.D. student and Fulbright scholar at Tufts University, was taken off a residential street in Somerville, Massachusetts.
The masked ICE agents then lead the terrified woman to their unmarked vehicles and drive off.
At 5:15 p.m., Ozturk, who came to the United States from Turkey on a student visa, had just left her apartment when, as video obtained by NBC News shows, she was approached by a man in a dark hoodie and hat who grabbed her hands. In that video, you can see and hear how upset and scared she is. Eventually, an ICE agent finally pulls out a badge and appears to identify himself as law enforcement.
Ozturk is quickly surrounded by half a dozen cops, all in street clothes with their faces covered by masks. They take her cellphone and physically remove her backpack. She is then handcuffed as a bystander films and asks how anyone is supposed to know these people are law enforcement officials. The ICE agents then lead the terrified woman to their unmarked vehicles and drive off.
Now, if all that were not chilling enough, an attorney for Ozturk released a statement earlier Wednesday saying in part: “We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her. … No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of.”
Tuesday night, a district court judge ordered Ozturk not be moved out of Massachusetts “without first providing advance notice.” But late the next afternoon, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee locator, Ozturk is currently being held in a south Louisiana ICE processing center, nearly 2,000 miles from where she was snatched off the street.
In response to Ozturk’s detention, more than 1,000 people showed up in Somerville on Wednesday night to protest and call for her return.
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that “investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” But she is still not charged with any crime. The “activities” she is accused of appear to be that she co-wrote an editorial in the Tufts University newspaper that was published a year ago.
The piece reads, in part, “We … affirm the equal dignity and humanity of all people,” specifically referencing Palestinians. It then goes on to quote the author James Baldwin and challenges the university’s president to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “embrace efforts by students to evaluate ‘diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions.’”
In response to Ozturk’s detention, more than 1,000 people showed up in Somerville on Wednesday night to protest and call for her return.
Ozturk is not charged with a crime because, as far as we know, she did not commit one. She is here legally on a visa. And while the government does have the discretion to terminate a visa, is this how America does that now — by snatching terrified students off the street and taking them thousands of miles across the country without anyone knowing?
That is as flatly authoritarian as anything we have ever seen in the United States.