The Trump administration was exposed for justifying its arrest and attempted deportation of Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk “solely on the inferences made” from an op-ed she co-authored that was critical of the Israeli government, newly unsealed court documents revealed Thursday.
Appointed during the Reagan administration, U.S. District Judge William Young unsealed a trove of court documents late Thursday that, according to The Boston Globe, exposed the Department of Homeland Security’s shaky legal grounds for arresting Öztürk last year.
“The files on Öztürk, some of which previously were not available to the public, indicate further that the government relied solely on the inferences made from an op-ed she wrote for the student newspaper to carry out the revocation of her visa, her arrest, and her detention,” the Globe reported.
A Turkish citizen, Öztürk was in the United States on a valid student visa when she was arrested in broad daylight by masked plainclothes DHS officers. She was released after spending weeks in detention by order of a federal judge, though legal proceedings remain ongoing.
Among the newly unsealed documents is a DHS summary of findings on Öztürk, with ex-DHS official Andre Watson writing that the student’s actions may have constituted “violations of President Trump’s executive orders on anti-Semitism,” and that her continued presence in the United States could “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Watson also singled out the op-ed co-authored by Öztürk in the document, labeling it as a piece of “anti-Israel activism.”
Öztürk is not the only legal migrant who’s been targeted by the Trump administration for deportation in its purported efforts to combat antisemitism.
Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested after helping lead the protests demanding the university divest from Israel amid its siege on Gaza, a siege that a United Nations commission declared to be a genocide last year. Others, like British journalist Sami Hamdi, Georgetown University student Badar Khan Suri and others have also been arrested over making comments critical of the Israeli government.
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