On March 26, 2024, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University, co-authored an op-ed criticizing the university’s response to student demands for divestment from Israel, which was published in its student newspaper. “Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide,” the authors wrote, referring to Israel’s disproportionate response to Hamas’s October 7 attacks. Aside from its focus on Tufts, a small private college outside Boston, it was hardly different from a lot of writing published in student newspapers across the country over the past two years—for that matter, it was little different from a lot of writing published in mainstream publications, including The New Republic.
On Tuesday, as captured on video, a half-dozen masked agents of the Department of Homeland Security ambushed Ozturk as she left her Somerville apartment to meet friends. She was surrounded, cuffed, led into an unmarked car, and driven away, apparently for the crime of having co-authored that op-ed. Despite a court order blocking authorities from removing her from Massachusetts without advance notice, she was flown to Louisiana—where many other visa holders like herself who have been critical of Israel are being held, such as Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil.
Masked agents snatching legal residents off the streets and disappearing them—not so long ago, this would be unthinkable in the United States. Now it is not only a regular occurrence but something that the Trump administration boasts about.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson claimed that Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” adding, “Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated.” But DHS has provided no evidence that Ozturk supported Hamas—indeed, the group is not mentioned in the offending op-ed. When asked Thursday about the student’s detention, Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed the uproar. “We revoked her visa … once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States,” he said. “If you come into the U.S. as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country.”
That was arguably not even the most chilling part of Rubio’s press conference. Rubio confirmed recent reporting that the U.S. State Department had revoked 300 student visas—most or all for criticizing Israel or protesting the war in Gaza—but then went further. “At some point, I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them, but we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.” So you can expect this dragnet to get even worse.
Ozturk’s abduction by agents of the state occurred during what has thus far been the biggest scandal of Trump’s second term. The Beltway media calls it “Signalgate.” As you surely know by know—since the story has dominated the news for three days—the Trump national security team accidentally included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg in a Signal group chat discussing precise plans to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen. It’s an embarrassing scandal that captures the idiocy and incompetence of the Trump administration, which has foolishly given the story extra legs with a raft of silly deflections and obvious lies.
But the detention and attempted deportation of student activists on spurious grounds—and the use of armed, typically masked agents of the state to do so—perfectly captures the real, menacing story of the second Trump administration. There’s the tortured, spurious defenses of extralegal action; the foaming of the mouth over nonwhite immigrants and “woke” students at elite universities; the criminalization of free speech that runs contrary to that espoused by the MAGA right; and the blatant violation of people’s legal rights.
By removing the authors of innocuous op-eds, Rubio seems to believe that he can surgically smother the opinions they were expressing. At the same time, this purge allows the administration to systematically attack higher education. Already, the administration has used student protests to attack a number of colleges and universities and to withhold hundreds of millions in federal funding from several. Allegations of antisemitism—and a list of demands that are more or less impossible to fully meet—are being used as a Trojan horse to withhold funding and to attack other sources of revenue. Many schools rely heavily on foreign students, who often pay full tuition. The Trump administration’s crackdown, even if it were to somehow stop today, has already seriously jeopardized that. Who would send their child to study in America in such a climate? Especially knowing their child could be swept off the street and flown to a detention facility?
None of the students who have had their visas revoked have had anything resembling due process. None of them have been accused of crimes. Instead, they are being punished for speech that’s rightly outraged over Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. Yes, Ozturk’s case and others like it will eventually all play out in the courts. But people are being swept off the streets right now, every day, and being detained without legitimate cause. The administration is fast-forwarding to its desired conclusion and daring the courts to stop it, while also choosing which court orders to obey and which to defy. Even if the judiciary were somehow able to stop all of this, the chilling effect remains—which, after all, is the point.
When Rubio was nominated for his current role, there was a mild sense of surprise. The senator was seen as a moderating force, an establishment Republican expected to be more committed to foreign policy norms—and, for that matter, the rule of law—than the president’s other nominees. And this belief (or hope) was projected on him in the early days of the administration. As Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office last month, Rubio seemed to shrink into the furniture. Body language doctors on social media and cable news overlaid the image with the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme. Here, at least, was someone who saw what was happening around him for what it really was.
The situation looks rather different now. As my colleague Greg Sargent wrote recently, Rubio is perhaps Trump’s biggest enabler. And his feverish pursuit of legal immigrants and students, over speech he and his boss object to, is the administration’s most appalling act thus far. I shudder to imagine how much worse it will get.
