The Trump Administration Is Building Its Own Gestapo

The Trump administration is now blatantly disappearing students and others who are in the country legally.

By Alex Shephard, The New Republic

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.