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Do We Still Have Rule of Law?
Rumeysa Ozturk being snatched by ICE
I don’t think people quite understand how bad things have gotten.
Two days ago, masked plainclothes ICE agents snatched a Tufts graduate student from Turkey off the streets of Boston and threw her into a car. You could be charitable and call it an “arrest,” but that word tends to connote other things like lawyers and hearings and judges that are unlikely to ever enter into the picture for Rumeysa Ozturk, the PhD candidate in question.*
I say there’s unlikely to be any due process because that has been the demonstrable pattern to date. When ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University, they Shanghai’d him off to a detention center in Louisiana where they refused to let him see an attorney. The only reason they didn’t deport him is because a judge blocked the order. Ozturk is now in a Louisiana detention center, too.
Other deportees have fared even worse. The Trump administration has been rounding up Venezuelans on the basis of having tattoos. Not gang tattoos — any tattoos. Mother Jones reports on one such Venezuelan who used to teach swimming to kids with developmental disabilities. One of his three tattoos was for autism awareness, because his little brother is autistic. After arresting him, ICE interviewed him about his tattoos. “You’re clean,” they told him after he explained the meaning behind them. “I’m going to put down here that you have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua.” Then they sent him to a Salvadoran supermax prison anyway (Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportee flights). Unlike with Khalil, this time even a judge couldn’t save him; the Trump administration simply ignored a court order on the flimsy and yet-to-be-proven pretext that the plane was already over international waters.
Other Venezuelans sent to El Salvador didn’t even reside in the U.S. in the first place, unless you call being locked in a detention center “residing.” Jerce Reyes Barrios, a Venezuelan professional soccer player, followed the legal protocol for applying for asylum: waiting in Mexico for months and making an appointment on the CBP One app for an interview at a port of entry. As someone who had been detained and tortured by the Maduro regime, he had a credible basis for his claims. He was given a hearing date and locked in a San Diego detention center while he awaited it. Then the Trump administration accused him of gang membership because he had a tattoo of his favorite Spanish soccer team. He was shipped off to El Salvador, where he’s imprisoned alongside the most dangerous gang members in the world. Mother Jones describes another, similar case of an asylum applicant who waited in Mexico, made an appointment at a port of entry, was detained in the U.S. and then exiled to El Salvador.
Social Studies is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The American government, in other words, isn’t just expelling foreigners who are legally in the United States and sending them back to where they came from. They’re snatching up foreign nationals who dared to apply for asylum, following our rules to the letter, and sending them to foreign gulags. This is just kidnapping.
The justification for these actions are, if anything, even scarier than the actions themselves. Marco Rubio doesn’t even bother to claim that any of these deportees have violated any laws, because he doesn’t need to. If you’re here on a visa or, arguably, even with a green card, the Secretary of State condemning you as a threat to U.S. foreign policy goals is enough to warrant removal. You’re simply guilty by accusation. Even then, you’re supposed to at least appear before an immigration judge to hear your case. But the Trump administration is doing everything it can to prevent even that minimum of due process from happening.
When asked, Rubio proudly proclaims that if you’re here on a student visa but you secretly want to “start a riot,” he’s going to kick you out. If you’re in the U.S., he explained earlier today, “because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa. If you lie to us and get a visa, and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa.”
Doing all those rowdy things sounds pretty bad at first, but look at how much work “participate in movements” is doing in this statement. You don’t have to actually commit any of these crimes yourself to be guilty of them. It’s enough that you’re part of a movement in which others have done these things. And what does “participate” mean, anyway? Do you need to be a leader, or just have attended a demonstration before? We got that answer a few days ago, when the Trump administration arrested a South Korea-born permanent resident who has been here since she was 7 years old and who once participated in a pro-Palestinian sit-in at Barnard. She, too, is being held in Louisiana.
But the bar can be brought lower still. Ozturk isn’t even accused of participating in an act of civil disobedience, like the student from South Korea. She wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper. For expressing her views on Israel’s war on Gaza, she has, by Rubio’s estimation, “participated in a movement” in which other people at other schools who she’s never met in her life committed criminal acts, and can thereby be deported. This “participated in movements” canard means that if you’re here on a student visa, and possibly even as a permanent resident, criticizing Israeli government policy is a violation of your status that can get you deported. Much to my chagrin, I’ve gotten into enough Twitter arguments about this over the last few days to know that a not insignificant number of Americans think that’s totally fine.
If you think your rights are safe from this arbitrary power because you’re a U.S. citizen, just think about it for five more seconds. If the government’s accusation alone is enough for them to arrest and detain you, and you don’t even get to go to immigration court to dispute the charges, and even if you did, the administration has shown itself willing to ignore court orders anyway, then the government can call anyone they want — you, for instance — a “visa holder” and deport them. You were born in San Diego, you say? Well, who are you going to tell that to? The ICE officers arresting you? The ones escorting you, shackled, onto a plane to El Salvador? Good luck with that.
Trump is going after lawful immigrants for two reasons: to show the immigration hardliners in his base that he’s deporting foreigners, whoever they are and for whatever reason, and because they’re easier to persecute than citizens. If you think this is just an immigration thing and it has nothing to do with your rights as an American, then consider the fact that as he carries out these deportations, he’s also blackmailing Columbia into clamping down on student protesters, citizen and non-citizen alike, and into appointing a third party to monitor one of one of its academic departments. And there are 59 other colleges and universities being investigated. The obvious goal here is to chill speech that’s critical of Israel, whoever’s saying it. They’re just declaring it straight up: writing an op-ed is the same as vandalizing a building, which is the same as materially supporting a terrorist organization. Citizens can be caught up in this Orwellian dragnet, too. This doesn’t stop with the foreign-born.
In fact, it doesn’t even stop with Israel. If ICE can arrest, imprison and deport people on the theory that because they have tattoos, that means they’re foreign-born gang members, what else can they snatch you up for? Wearing a suss-looking hat? Talking shit? Posting stuff they don’t like on Twitter? Well if they did, you might be tempted to counter, it would be laughed out of court. But are you sure you’re getting a court date? What if they suspect you’re a Venezuelan, or just pretend to suspect it? Can they load you on a plane and ship you to Bukele’s high-tech dungeon before you even get a chance to talk to a lawyer? Say you do get a court date — are you sure the Trump administration is going to unlock your cage when the judge finds you innocent?
How sure are you that the systems you’ve always taken for granted are still intact? How confident are you that this government respects your so-called “rights”?
*Update 03/28: According to CNN, Ozturk has a removal hearing scheduled for April 7. So I was wrong in predicting there would be no formal due process. Whether the April 7 hearing provides substantive due process has yet to be seen. Immigration hearings are notoriously rapid-fire, often without any defense counsel present, and immigration judges work for the Department of Justice and are thus part of Executive Branch, not the Judicial Branch — in short, they’re part of the Trump administration. I do not equate the mere occurrence of a hearing as due process anymore than I would a trial in a kangaroo court in a country run by a dictator. But I am open to the possibility that the process will be a fair and meaningful one.
I’m still deciding whether and how to change my paywalling practice, but I’m defaulting for the time being to lifting the paywall. That means I need your support more than ever to make this newsletter sustainable. Please become a paid subscriber:
Subscribe now
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By Leighton WoodhouseRumeysa Ozturk being snatched by ICE
I don’t think people quite understand how bad things have gotten.
Two days ago, masked plainclothes ICE agents snatched a Tufts graduate student from Turkey off the streets of Boston and threw her into a car. You could be charitable and call it an “arrest,” but that word tends to connote other things like lawyers and hearings and judges that are unlikely to ever enter into the picture for Rumeysa Ozturk, the PhD candidate in question.*
I say there’s unlikely to be any due process because that has been the demonstrable pattern to date. When ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University, they Shanghai’d him off to a detention center in Louisiana where they refused to let him see an attorney. The only reason they didn’t deport him is because a judge blocked the order. Ozturk is now in a Louisiana detention center, too.
Other deportees have fared even worse. The Trump administration has been rounding up Venezuelans on the basis of having tattoos. Not gang tattoos — any tattoos. Mother Jones reports on one such Venezuelan who used to teach swimming to kids with developmental disabilities. One of his three tattoos was for autism awareness, because his little brother is autistic. After arresting him, ICE interviewed him about his tattoos. “You’re clean,” they told him after he explained the meaning behind them. “I’m going to put down here that you have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua.” Then they sent him to a Salvadoran supermax prison anyway (Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportee flights). Unlike with Khalil, this time even a judge couldn’t save him; the Trump administration simply ignored a court order on the flimsy and yet-to-be-proven pretext that the plane was already over international waters.
Other Venezuelans sent to El Salvador didn’t even reside in the U.S. in the first place, unless you call being locked in a detention center “residing.” Jerce Reyes Barrios, a Venezuelan professional soccer player, followed the legal protocol for applying for asylum: waiting in Mexico for months and making an appointment on the CBP One app for an interview at a port of entry. As someone who had been detained and tortured by the Maduro regime, he had a credible basis for his claims. He was given a hearing date and locked in a San Diego detention center while he awaited it. Then the Trump administration accused him of gang membership because he had a tattoo of his favorite Spanish soccer team. He was shipped off to El Salvador, where he’s imprisoned alongside the most dangerous gang members in the world. Mother Jones describes another, similar case of an asylum applicant who waited in Mexico, made an appointment at a port of entry, was detained in the U.S. and then exiled to El Salvador.
Social Studies is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The American government, in other words, isn’t just expelling foreigners who are legally in the United States and sending them back to where they came from. They’re snatching up foreign nationals who dared to apply for asylum, following our rules to the letter, and sending them to foreign gulags. This is just kidnapping.
The justification for these actions are, if anything, even scarier than the actions themselves. Marco Rubio doesn’t even bother to claim that any of these deportees have violated any laws, because he doesn’t need to. If you’re here on a visa or, arguably, even with a green card, the Secretary of State condemning you as a threat to U.S. foreign policy goals is enough to warrant removal. You’re simply guilty by accusation. Even then, you’re supposed to at least appear before an immigration judge to hear your case. But the Trump administration is doing everything it can to prevent even that minimum of due process from happening.
When asked, Rubio proudly proclaims that if you’re here on a student visa but you secretly want to “start a riot,” he’s going to kick you out. If you’re in the U.S., he explained earlier today, “because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa. If you lie to us and get a visa, and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa.”
Doing all those rowdy things sounds pretty bad at first, but look at how much work “participate in movements” is doing in this statement. You don’t have to actually commit any of these crimes yourself to be guilty of them. It’s enough that you’re part of a movement in which others have done these things. And what does “participate” mean, anyway? Do you need to be a leader, or just have attended a demonstration before? We got that answer a few days ago, when the Trump administration arrested a South Korea-born permanent resident who has been here since she was 7 years old and who once participated in a pro-Palestinian sit-in at Barnard. She, too, is being held in Louisiana.
But the bar can be brought lower still. Ozturk isn’t even accused of participating in an act of civil disobedience, like the student from South Korea. She wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper. For expressing her views on Israel’s war on Gaza, she has, by Rubio’s estimation, “participated in a movement” in which other people at other schools who she’s never met in her life committed criminal acts, and can thereby be deported. This “participated in movements” canard means that if you’re here on a student visa, and possibly even as a permanent resident, criticizing Israeli government policy is a violation of your status that can get you deported. Much to my chagrin, I’ve gotten into enough Twitter arguments about this over the last few days to know that a not insignificant number of Americans think that’s totally fine.
If you think your rights are safe from this arbitrary power because you’re a U.S. citizen, just think about it for five more seconds. If the government’s accusation alone is enough for them to arrest and detain you, and you don’t even get to go to immigration court to dispute the charges, and even if you did, the administration has shown itself willing to ignore court orders anyway, then the government can call anyone they want — you, for instance — a “visa holder” and deport them. You were born in San Diego, you say? Well, who are you going to tell that to? The ICE officers arresting you? The ones escorting you, shackled, onto a plane to El Salvador? Good luck with that.
Trump is going after lawful immigrants for two reasons: to show the immigration hardliners in his base that he’s deporting foreigners, whoever they are and for whatever reason, and because they’re easier to persecute than citizens. If you think this is just an immigration thing and it has nothing to do with your rights as an American, then consider the fact that as he carries out these deportations, he’s also blackmailing Columbia into clamping down on student protesters, citizen and non-citizen alike, and into appointing a third party to monitor one of one of its academic departments. And there are 59 other colleges and universities being investigated. The obvious goal here is to chill speech that’s critical of Israel, whoever’s saying it. They’re just declaring it straight up: writing an op-ed is the same as vandalizing a building, which is the same as materially supporting a terrorist organization. Citizens can be caught up in this Orwellian dragnet, too. This doesn’t stop with the foreign-born.
In fact, it doesn’t even stop with Israel. If ICE can arrest, imprison and deport people on the theory that because they have tattoos, that means they’re foreign-born gang members, what else can they snatch you up for? Wearing a suss-looking hat? Talking shit? Posting stuff they don’t like on Twitter? Well if they did, you might be tempted to counter, it would be laughed out of court. But are you sure you’re getting a court date? What if they suspect you’re a Venezuelan, or just pretend to suspect it? Can they load you on a plane and ship you to Bukele’s high-tech dungeon before you even get a chance to talk to a lawyer? Say you do get a court date — are you sure the Trump administration is going to unlock your cage when the judge finds you innocent?
How sure are you that the systems you’ve always taken for granted are still intact? How confident are you that this government respects your so-called “rights”?
*Update 03/28: According to CNN, Ozturk has a removal hearing scheduled for April 7. So I was wrong in predicting there would be no formal due process. Whether the April 7 hearing provides substantive due process has yet to be seen. Immigration hearings are notoriously rapid-fire, often without any defense counsel present, and immigration judges work for the Department of Justice and are thus part of Executive Branch, not the Judicial Branch — in short, they’re part of the Trump administration. I do not equate the mere occurrence of a hearing as due process anymore than I would a trial in a kangaroo court in a country run by a dictator. But I am open to the possibility that the process will be a fair and meaningful one.
I’m still deciding whether and how to change my paywalling practice, but I’m defaulting for the time being to lifting the paywall. That means I need your support more than ever to make this newsletter sustainable. Please become a paid subscriber:
Subscribe now