If Rumeysa Orturk Is Denied Due Process, We All Lose!

Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, had just left her home in Somerville on Tuesday night when she was stopped and detained by officials. [Social media]

By now, most Americans have seen video of the arrest of Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Orturk, a 30-year-old Turkish national studying in the United States on an F-1 student visa. She was swarmed by six plainclothes officers, manhandled, and arrested before any of the federal agents bothered to show her a badge.
 
Orturk was then whisked away from that sidewalk in Somerville, Massachusetts, to a detention center in Louisiana before her attorney could file a petition for writ of habeas corpus and a federal judge issue an order telling the government to not to take her out of state. If Orturk is subsequently deported without being given due process, it will be an outrage that threatens to compromise the freedom of speech of every American.
 
When it comes to stopping antisemitic protesters who established “Jew Free” zones on campus, and terrorized Jewish students and faculty, Protect The 1st takes a backseat to no one. We won’t shrink from saying, even as an organization dedicated to the First Amendment, that foreign students who violently support Hamas – which invaded Israel and murdered more than a thousand people, including babies – should not be coddled by university administrators or ignored by immigration authorities.
 
Where is the law on this case? Visa holders have almost the same First Amendment rights as American citizens. But the law does stipulate that they can be deported for endorsing or espousing terrorist activities. To international students who come to the United States and agitate in favor of Hamas and other radical terrorists, we can only wish them a one-way ticket to those regimes.
 
This is a popular sentiment. More Americans – 43 percent – “strongly” or “somewhat” support deporting international students studying in the United States under some circumstances, according to a recent Economist and YouGov poll. Some 35 percent of Americans strongly or somewhat oppose these deportations. But this particular arrest is a consequence of the lack of precision in a presidential executive order to deport foreign students who engaged in “pro-jihadist” protests or “antisemitism.”
 
As far as any journalist has been able to tell, Ozturk’s only infraction was to cosign with a number of other students a March 26 student newspaper op-ed telling Tuft’s University President Sunil Kumar that the university should divest from companies that do business in Israel. The letter accuses Israel of fomenting “deliberate starvation” and “indiscriminate slaughter” of Palestinian civilians in a way that is a “plausible genocide.”
 
No statement to date has linked Ozturk to Hamas, or to defending Hamas. Her op-ed makes no mention of Hamas. Many reasonable people see charges of “genocide” against Israel and calls to divest from that country as expressions of antisemitism. Many others, also reasonable people, point out that Israeli bombs and bullets have recently surpassed the threshold of 50,000 men, women, and children killed. Supporters of Israel reply that it is Hamas that is using these innocents as human shields… and so on.
 
All this back-and-forth falls within the sphere of debatable facts and heated interpretations. The government’s actions against Ozturk, so far, do not.
 
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when asked about this arrest, told CNN that if you are “involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa.”
 
We couldn’t agree more, but we have to again ask: What does any of this have to do with Ozturk, student op-ed signer? What image are we broadcasting to the world about America as the beacon of liberty if she is deported without due process? Take a look at the reaction in Turkey and ask how this story serves American foreign policy? This is certainly a made-to-order issue for Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, a demagogue who often resorts to anti-American diatribes.
 
Worst of all, a denial of due process would give permission for the government to deconstruct speech of all sorts in search of a crime.
 
For all these reason, Protect The 1st urges the government to ensure that Rumeysa Orturk is afforded due process so the facts of her case can be made known, and a proper decision made on that basis.

DONATE & HELP US PROTECT YOUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS