exist Tuesday around 5:15 pma man in black hoodie stopped Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. She tried to walk by, but he grabbed her. She screamed, as if helping.
But the masked newcomer is actually trying to help her attackers. They took off Ozturk’s backpack and grabbed her cell phone. The hooded man handcuffed her. “We are police,” they told her.
“You don’t look like it,” replied a noticeable bystander. “Why are you hiding your face?”
Ozturk The court ordered her to stay in Massachusetts. The State Council canceled Ozturk’s visa; Bing is preparing for deportation.
The Trump administration claims she engages in “family” activities, but they provide no evidence of significant support for Palestinian militants (or any other terrorist organization). The closest thing anyone finds is 2024 column articles in Tufts Student NewspaperOzturk and her co-author criticized Israel’s war in Gaza, but expressed nothing that approximates support for Hamas.
This disturbing theory (Ozturk was given purely political speech for her political speech) was punished at a Thursday afternoon press conference, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio explain His agency revoked Ozturk’s visa because she was part of the Pro-Palestinian campaign, which caused a “combust” on campus.
“We gave you a visa to study and get a degree, rather than becoming a social activist, tore our university campus apart,” he said. No evidence was provided What Ozturk does is more destructive than writing a column. He also suggested that he revoke his visaMore than 300The students are like her.
This is a time of clarification for American democracy. Unlabeled and unidentified law enforcement has kidnapped legal immigrants in what appears to be a retaliation for the First Amendment protected speech, an attack on civil liberties that we will not hesitate to label as authoritarians in another country.
This is just a lot of examples.
Target At least seven more pro-Palestine studentsrendering Hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador prison campand Extended detention and Physical abuse Legal immigration at the border – All of which represent an extraordinary abuse of federal power, the target of the group whose citizenship gives them limited legal recourse.
Long-term fear Therefore, the weaponization of the U.S. government against dissidents is no longer a hypothetical. What happened was the full range of autocratic scope of federal immigration power. Things may get worse from here.
Immigration law enforcement is an authoritarian portal drug
On Wednesday night, Mother Jones posted a question on how Trump administration determines Venezuelans are deported This shows how dangerous the current moment is.
Journalists Noah Lanard and Isabela Dias conducted extensive interviews with friends, family and community members of several men sent to El Salvador. They found no evidence that, as the Trump administration calls it, the men were members of the Tren de Alagua gang. Instead, the reporter found that they were kidnapped purely because of their tattoos.
Venezuelan baker Neri Alvarado Borges lives in the Dallas area, which is a great example.
No one knew him, and he believed he had any connection with Tren de Aragua. However, they did point out that his ribbon had a big tattoo – a tribute to his brother, Nelyerson, who is a 15-year-old autistic one. According to Borges, the tattoo and the other two were the only reasons why he was detained.
“Well, you’re here because of your tattoo,” a hockey agent told Borges in Jones’s mother’s report. “We are discovering and questioning all those with tattoos.”
As far as law enforcement is concerned, this is a ridiculous policy. Experts at Tren de Aragua Don’t believe it There is a generally reliable way to use tattoos to identify gang members. Other reports on ice errors confirm this, such as sending professional footballers to El Salvador prison Because, his lawyer said, his Real Madrid Ink.
But, in order to maintain power, this makes sense. The government has identified groups they want to suppress, such as Venezuelan immigrants and pro-Palestinian activists – are exploiting kidnapping and Physical harm Control or silence them. This is the classic authoritarian politics: using law enforcement to punish law-abiding individuals who belong to the wrong group or have wrong ideas.
It’s easy to see why non-citizens are getting the worst situation right now. They have fewer rights under the American legal system, which makes it easier for them to suffer the most brutal brutal force.
Yet, as Trump’s treatment of college and federal bureaucracy demonstrates, he also desires to exercise arbitrary power over his citizens. And there is good reason to believe that the version of the strategy used today may one day target citizens – the most important of which is the Trump team’s “transsexual,” the process of depriving citizens of naturalized Americans.
In his 2021 book Immigration and freedompolitical theorist Chandran Kukathas believes that immigration enforcement essentially requires restricting citizens’ rights. For the purpose of deportation or welfare provision, attempts to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens require increased levels of surveillance and monitoring of everyone living in the country. How does the government distinguish between the people they intend to target from those they don’t?
Kukathas generally writes about immigration law enforcement systems – noting that even the most interested people need to have some restrictions on freedom. But what happens when you try to wield power created by immigration enforcement in any way, and it seems to be a way to suppress critics and sow horror attitudes?
OK, then you get such a statement from it White House Aide Stephen Miller: “Dear Marxist Judge: If an illegal foreign criminal breaks into our country, he has the only right to deport ‘process’.”
Miller here expresses not only his disdain for the idea of “due process.” He expressed his contempt for the idea that any legal check should be conducted on their ability to determine deportation. Due process exists because law enforcement cannot be trusted to follow only the “right” goals. A free society depends on supervision and restrictions on police power. Otherwise, freedom is just a word on paper, but the whimsicality of the guns.
Miller, in expressing his hostile attitude toward this idea, shows us the link between the government’s attack on immigration, the repression of American citizens, and the contempt for legal oversight.
They act like they have the right to follow anyone they want in any way they want – anyone who tries to stop them is unfaithful at best, and the worst is sympathizers of terrorists.
We’ve seen this kind of politics before. Its record is grim.
