Rumeysa Ozturk's Op-Ed Is Still the Only Public Justification for Her Arrest
"It is unthinkable that a person in a free society could be snatched from the street, imprisoned, and threatened with deportation for expressing an opinion the government dislikes," says FIRE.
When immigration agents grabbed Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk off the street near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, on March 25, it looked like her only crime was cowriting an anti-Israel op-ed that had appeared in the school newspaper a year earlier. It still looks that way a month later, despite the government's vague allusions to additional evidence supporting Ozturk's removal from the United States.
"It is unthinkable that a person in a free society could be snatched from the
street, imprisoned, and threatened with deportation for expressing an opinion the
government dislikes," the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) says in a brief it filed on Tuesday in support of Ozturk's challenge to her treatment. The brief in Ozturk v. Trump, which was joined by the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Rutherford Institute, PEN America, the Cato Institute, and the First Amendment Lawyers Association, notes that Secretary of State Marco Rubio deemed Ozturk deportable "not because the government claims she committed a crime or other deportable offense" but "for the seemingly sole reason that her expression—an op-ed in a student newspaper—stirred the Trump administration to anger."
Ozturk, a Turkish citizen, was pursuing a Ph.D. in child study and human development at Tufts. Her arrest "doesn't really make sense, because she wasn't a figure on campus," Najiba Akbar, a former Muslim chaplain at Tufts, told The New York Times last month. "I don't think she was active in banned groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. From what I know, she was doing her thing, doing her Ph.D."
Although "some Gaza activism on university campuses has involved actions the First Amendment does not immunize, including vandalism, physical violence, and unlawful building occupations," FIRE notes, "neither the Trump administration nor Tufts [has] alleged Ms. Ozturk engaged in those or any other unlawful actions. To the contrary, the University confirmed that Ms. Ozturk is a student in good standing, that she had followed regulations concerning students on visas, and that the university has no information that she engaged in unlawful conduct warranting her arrest."
In a March 21 memo explaining the justification for revoking Ozturk's student visa, a State Department official said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had determined that she was "involved in associations that 'may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization,' including [co-authoring] an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus." Note the slippery reasoning, which amounts to guilt by association.
The DHS was referring to Hamas, the terrorist organization that started the war in Gaza by mounting a barbaric attack on southern Israel in October 2023, and (presumably) to Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which the university suspended last October because of "multiple violations of university policies" during protests against Israel's response to that invasion. But the DHS did not claim that Ozturk herself had supported Hamas, even rhetorically. It did not even claim that Ozturk was a member of SJP or had been involved in disruptive protest activities. Rather, it averred that she had "found common cause" with SJP, which in turn had expressed support for Hamas.
As evidence of that "common cause," the DHS cited the op-ed piece that Ozturk published in The Tufts Daily on March 26, 2024. In that essay, Ozturk and three other international students expressed dismay at Tufts President Sunil Kumar's "wholly inadequate and dismissive" response to three anti-Israel resolutions passed by the Tufts Community Union Senate (TCUS). Those SJP-backed resolutions demanded that the university "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide," stop the sale of Sabra products in Tufts dining facilities, and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.
As Ozturk and her co-authors saw it, the resolutions "were the product of meaningful debate by the Senate and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law." They added that "credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide." They urged Kumar to "meaningfully engage with and actualize the resolutions passed by the Senate."
The views that Ozturk expressed were not merely "pro-Palestinian." She tendentiously equated civilian casualties in a war of self-defense with "genocide." And by explicitly supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, she endorsed the proposition that all Israelis should be shunned and punished for their government's alleged "violations of international law." According to BDS supporters, that collective responsibility extends to a hummus manufacturer and every other business associated with Israel. It even extends to Israeli educational and research institutions: A fourth TCUS resolution, which failed on a tie vote, would have demanded an end to Tufts study-abroad programs at Israeli universities.
Kumar rightly rejected this illiberal, indiscriminate approach to addressing Palestinian grievances, a strategy that most Jews and other supporters of Israel view as unfair and offensive. But supporting the BDS movement is by no means tantamount to supporting Hamas. Nor is it necessarily an indication of antisemitism, although the movement's critics understandably object to its curiously selective moral logic.
The Washington Post reports that an internal State Department memo written "days before" Ozturk's arrest concluded that the DHS "had not produced any evidence showing that she engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization." The DHS nevertheless claimed Ozturk "engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans." It added that "glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated," which it called "commonsense security." But FIRE notes that Rubio "did not provide any examples or evidence of Ms. Ozturk engaging in such actions" when he was asked about her at a press conference two days after her arrest.
"The activities presented to me meet the standard of what I've just described to you: people that are supportive of movements that run counter to the foreign policy
of the United States," Rubio said. But he "pointed to nothing Ozturk had done beyond writing an op-ed," FIRE notes.
Rubio implied there was more: "I would caution you against solely going off of what
the media has been able to identify, and those presentations, if necessary, will be made in court." That had not happened as of April 18, when U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III considered Ozturk's First Amendment and due process claims against the Trump administration.
Sessions, who sits on the U.S. Court for the District of Vermont, is hearing Ozturk's case because she was detained in that state at the point when her lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition on her behalf. Like former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was also deemed "subject to removal" because of his political views, Ozturk was later transferred to an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
"In support of her First Amendment claim," Sessions wrote, Ozturk "has submitted evidence to show that the actions against her were retaliatory, as the only identifiable conduct supporting her detention is her co-authoring of a Tufts University op-ed. The government has submitted no evidence to counter her First Amendment claim."
Sessions noted that Rubio "has argued publicly that there are additional justifications for the government's actions adverse to Ms. Ozturk and that these justifications may be filed in court if necessary." The judge invited "an immediate submission [of] any such evidence in this case," adding: "In the absence of additional information from the government, the Court's habeas review is likely to conclude that Ms. Ozturk has presented a substantial claim." As of today, the docket for the case includes no such "additional information."
Even if Ozturk had explicitly voiced support for Hamas or openly railed against Jews, FIRE notes, those opinions would be protected by the First Amendment. But as the record stands, her op-ed piece, which was mild compared to much of the rhetoric heard during campus protests against the Gaza war, is the sole exhibit against her.
Rubio is manifestly uninterested in drawing such distinctions, and the statute on which he is relying does not require him to do so. That provision, 8 USC 1227(a)(4)(C)(i), authorizes the deportation of "an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States." FIRE has argued that such sweeping authority is unconstitutionally vague and inconsistent with the First Amendment.
In the 1945 case Bridges v. Wixon, the Supreme Court held that "freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country." Justice Frank Murphy amplified that point in a concurring opinion: "Once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country, he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders. Such rights include those protected by the First and the Fifth Amendments and by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. None of these provisions acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens."
The Trump administration, FIRE argues in its brief supporting Ozturk's First Amendment claims, has "confused fundamental distinctions between government powers to permit or deny an individual's request to enter the United States versus the rights of an individual who has lawfully entered and resides here on a visa." It says "there is no merit to a government argument that, because the political branches have broad authority over immigration matters, the government can cast aside the constitutional rights of legal residents like Ms. Ozturk."
There is "no serious argument that Ms. Ozturk's op-ed contains any unprotected speech, and the government does not assert any such claim could be made," FIRE notes. "Nor can the administration justify Ms. Ozturk's detention by vaguely alleging Ms. Ozturk's speech supported terrorism." For one thing, "it didn't." For another, "advocacy far more aggressive than Ozturk's would still retain full First Amendment protection."
FIRE quotes Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion in the 2011 case Snyder v. Phelps, which overturned a civil judgment against members of the Westboro Baptist Church based on their picketing at soldiers' funerals. "Speech is powerful," Roberts wrote. "It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate."
In this case, however, "stifling public debate appears to be the point," FIRE says. President Donald Trump has made it clear that his crusade against "terrorist sympathizers" is meant to have a chilling effect.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump said, "Any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they're going to behave." After Khalil's arrest, Rubio explained the lesson for students who engage in "anti-Semitic activities" on campus: "We're going to kick you out. It's as simple as that."
If the courts allow Trump and Rubio to proceed with this plan, FIRE warns, "foreign students would (with good reason) fear criticizing the current American government during classroom debates, in term papers, and on social media, lest they risk arrest, detention, and eventually deportation. That result is utterly incompatible with the longstanding recognition that '[t]he essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident,' and that 'students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding.'"
FIRE notes that U.S. courts "have rejected viewpoint discrimination for decades, particularly at universities." Yet "the government's detention of Ms. Ozturk for the reasons given to date amounts to confessed viewpoint discrimination." FIRE adds that "arresting and detaining Ms. Ozturk because of her political opinions is textbook unlawful retaliation. "
Constitutional arguments aside, what message are Trump and Rubio sending when they maintain that dissenting opinions are an intolerable threat to U.S. foreign policy interests? The argument is implausible on its face, since it is hard to believe that ejecting students like Ozturk or Khalil would have any discernible impact on those interests.
Allowing those students to stay in the United States, Rubio maintains, "would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest"—specifically, the government's interest in "combat[ting] anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States." Yet every American has a constitutional right to openly express hatred of Jews, and that legal tolerance of bigotry in no way means the government endorses those opinions.
It is a sign of America's strength as a free society that the First Amendment allows people to express even the most abhorrent views in the interest of promoting the vigorous "public debate" that Roberts was keen to protect in Snyder. The intolerance championed by Trump and Rubio, by contrast, is weakness posing as strength.
