A group of well-known Democrats called on the Donald Trump administration to immediately release Tufts graduate student RümeysaÖztürk, praised her “unwavering spirit” and warned the White House that it was engaged in “oppression.”
In a New York Times essay issued Friday morning, US Senator Ed Markey and representatives of Massachusetts, Jim McGovern and Ayana Presley, who represent Tufts-based Massachusetts, shared more details from their visit to the Öztürk (ICE) Detention Center since their arrests last month at Louisiana’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center.
“She was inadequately fed, kept in the facility in very cold temperatures, denying personal essentials and religious accommodation,” and “suffering from an asthma attack, where she was short on the drugs she had been prescribed,” the lawmaker wrote.
“Despite all this,” they added, “We were struck by her unwavering spirit.”
The lawmakers were part of a delegation of Congressional Democrats who traveled to Louisiana this week to visit both Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, a University of Louisiana graduate and Palestinian activists who are held in ice custody at independent Louisiana facilities.
Öztürk, who co-authored an opinion essay last year in Tufts Student Newspaper, who has been critical of the university’s response to Israeli attacks on Palestinians, was detained in late March and moved to Louisiana. Neither she nor Halil have been charged with crimes, and it appears to be targeted solely for the political views of the Trump administration’s crackdown, far beyond the undocumented immigrant communities that Trump pledged to banish when he was running for a second term.
rümeysaÖztürk. Photo: Courtesy of Öztürk Family/Reuters
“This is not immigration enforcement,” the lawmaker wrote. “This is oppression. This is authoritarianism.”
They warned that the Öztürk incident was “not isolated.”
“This administration already oversees a wave of unconstitutional actions: long-term detention without warrant-free attacks, hearings, retaliatory deportation,” they write.
Lawmakers warn that each case “lacks the rule of law” and “makes it easier to be noticed next,” and “gets closer to authoritarianism, which once believed would not be rooted in American soil.
“When governments begin to jail writers for language, when they abandon legal norms for political convenience, when they are being suppressed in the language of national security, the alarm bells have to be heard loudly,” they wrote.
They asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately release Öztürk, withdraw the proceedings against her and investigate the conditions of the detention center where she is being held.
They also urged Republican colleagues to stand up to President Trump’s revealing he ignored the rule of law.
“And we urge all Americans to understand. This is not someone else’s fight,” they conclude. “The Constitution is only as strong as its willingness to defend it.”
Also, in the case of Khalil, DHS’s lawyers had no warrant when he arrested him last month, revealed in court documents.
A lawyer representing the administration argued on Thursday that “officials had an urgent situation to make a warrantless arrest,” and that agents believe Halil will “run away before getting a warrant.”
Khalil’s legal team argues that Khalil’s removal procedures should be terminated as they were arrested without a warrant. His lawyer also stated that Halil had no plans to flee or leave, and emphasized that “he fully complied with the agents arresting him despite the fact that after repeated requests from his pregnant wife and his lawyer Khalil, they did not show him a warrant.” His wife has since given birth, but Halil was not released due to the event.
