ICE Abduction of Tufts Student Suggests a pro-Netanhyahu Spy Network Is Policing Students In the US

Another distinguished student scholar was just forcibly snatched off the streets of the United States by the Trump Administration because of her political views.

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Above is the chilling video of the brilliant Tufts University grad student and Fulbright scholar Rumeysa Ozturk literally being disappeared off the streets near Boston on Tuesday, apparently by masked ICE agents in unmarked cars. I posted this video yesterday on another platform and it has been viewed more than 500,000 times. I’ve now counted at least six pro-Palestinian students in the US who have been abducted in the last three weeks by ICE because of their political views critical of Israel. None have been charged with a crime.

Ozturk is from Turkey and was here on a valid student visa, according to Tufts. What is known is that Ozturk was one of several authors of an opinion essay last year published in the Tufts student newspaper that criticized university leaders for not taking a more forceful stand against Israel over its brutal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. Pro-Israel extremist groups like Canary Mission had published Ozturk’s picture on its website as retaliation for engaging in pro-Palestinian activism, subjecting her to intense online harassment in recent months according to news reports. She was pursuing a doctorate degree.

The mechanism of repression being imposed by the Trump Administration on those who speak out against Israel’s atrocities is coming into sharper focus. Extremist pro-Israel groups like Betar and Canary Mission are serving as the de facto US arm of the Netanyahu government to attack students who call out Israel’s atrocities. They act as a Stasi-like secret spy network — sort of like agents of the Mossad in the United States, although they are not formally a part of the spy agency. They admit to compiling lists of student activists that they give to the Trump Administration for arrest and hoped-for deportation. (Betar says it compiled a deportation list with “thousands” of names of pro-Palestinian students that it turned over to the government, according to Democracy Now; Canary Mission has a long history of doxxing and harassing Palestinian students.)

The State Department then “revokes” the visas of those selected from the list in violation of the First Amendment and without a hearing. ICE then arrests those targeted, who are usually student leaders. Almost all are locked up in for-profit immigration detention facilities immediately, which is akin to indefinite detention without charges. For example, both Khalil and Ozturn were quickly flown to facilities in Louisiana, a southern US state ruled by the most conservative federal appeals court in the nation. The court process to obtain release can take months and months with uncertain results; essentially, the process becomes the punishment. This is what happened on March 8 to the distinguished grad student and diplomat Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia, when he was arrested at his university-owned apartment building near the Columbia campus. It happened to Georgetown doctoral student Badar Khan Suri.

This is pure repression. It’s patently illegal. If they get away with, I believe Trump will try to target citizens next. In the meantime, our courts thus far seem unwilling or unable to stop these abductions.

Khalil’s case will be heard Friday in federal court in Newark (New Jersey) at 10 am with several critical issues on the table — including his possible release and whether the case will stay in the more liberal court of New Jersey or be shifted to Louisiana as the Trump Administration prefers. Khalil’s wife, a US citizen, is scheduled to give birth to their first child in days. I urge everyone in the New York area to attend.

-Steven