Carey’s balsamroot and Douglas’s wild onion against Bretz hills and pine stands near Fishtrap, WA
An update on Rümeysa Oztürk and Mahmoud Khalil
My precious son called me twice Sunday to chat me up and also remind me how the maelstrom of Trumpism is a relentless challenge to our souls.
He is not happy about it and, suffice to say, neither am I. If it’s not the cruelty, it’s the corruption, and if it’s not the corruption it’s the daily lies and the clownish hypocrisy. Then, of course, the whole bleepshow rests upon the question of why roughly half the American electorate chose this course. We’ll get to that another time.
The sensory overload can be smothering, as the unhinged president starts new fires to distract from the ones he’s already ignited, then lashes out in all directions—even mocking some of his most loyal supporters as “stupid and foolish Republicans” and tools of the evil Democrats in their calls for full disclosure in the Epstein “hoax.” []
Rather than chase that dust cloud, today, I thought it more useful to update earlier posts about two foreign graduate students who, through no fault of their own, became high-profile targets of a cynical campaign—conducted in our names and on our behalf as Americans—to demonize and intimidate immigrants and dissidents. I also want to link to Aaron Hedge’s piece at Range media on the status of those arrested in Spokane during the conflict with ICE and local law enforcement on June 11.
A brief preface
• Suffice to say there’s a need to devise a humane system that accommodates the flow of vital migrant workers (i.e. those in agriculture and construction) and affords timely asylum for those in justifiable fear of political incarceration, or worse. During the last year of the Biden Administration there was a bipartisan effort (led in the Senate by conservative Republican senator James Lankford of Oklahoma) toward that goal. But it fell apart, and Lankford acknowledged that Trump—for purely political reasons— successfully lobbied Republican lawmakers to kill it.
•Into that void came Trump’s return to the White House and a swift return to the Trumpian practice of using immigration as a political cudgel; to purposefully cast non-white and Muslim immigrants as criminals and subversives, then round them up and showcase their inhumane treatment (witness Alligator Alcatraz.) In short, Trump concocted a crisis not just to win votes but to justify what numerous critics, including prominent U.S. Catholic Archbishop Robert McElroy, say amounts to a campaign of terror.
Rümeysa Oztürk
Rümeysa Oztürk with one of her attorneys upon her release from an ICE detention facility in May
Ozturk is the Turkish Phd student, attending Tufts University near Boston, who was seized by plainclothes and masked Immigration Customs & Enforcement (ICE) agents in late March. She is a former Fulbright scholar who’s been attending Tufts on a student visa. Though her lawyer promptly filed a habeas petition challenging the legality of her abduction, she was swiftly carted off by ICE to several locations, eventually landing in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana.
Her offense? She’d co-authored a guest column for the Tufts student newspaper in March of 2024 soundly criticizing the mistreatment of Palestinians in Gaza who, with U.S. backing, were (and still are) being killed and injured in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) siege. In her opinion that the IDF action constitutes genocide she is joined by Amnesty International and, more recently, the noted Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov, a former IDF commander who now teaches at Brown University.
It turns out Oztürk been doxed by a pro-Israeli group solely because of the guest column, and then baselessly accused by the Department of Homeland Security of “having engaged in activities..in support of a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.”
There were no “activities”—just the singular act of co-authoring the column. For this, her student visa was revoked (without her knowledge) and she was snatched off the street by a handful of plains clothed ICE agents. Her swift transfer to Louisiana was disclosed several hours after a Massachusetts judge issued an order that she not be transported out of state.
Oztürk has kept a low profile since her court-ordered release from the Louisiana detention facility in May. But last Thursday the Tufts student newspaper and Vanity Fair published a lengthy account of her long detention, describing the grim conditions and macabre cruelties inflicted upon her and other women detainees at the ICE facility.
Although I was comforted by the women around me, every day resembled a new chapter from Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” We stumbled upon frogs, crawfish, snakes and bugs in the yard and were ridiculed by some officers for being afraid. Some days, the officers played “Happy” by Pharell Williams loudly when we were walking, only increasing our desperation. The temperatures in Louisiana were scorching. After I arrived, we were not allowed to have any time outside for almost one week. Our yard time was limited. We constantly faced a choice between the fresh air and shielding ourselves from the sun, as there were only a few shaded spots available. In stark contrast, our room felt freezing. To find some relief, we heated plastic water bottles and used them as mini heaters.—excerpt from Rümeysa Oztürk’s account of her confinement at the ICE detention facility in Louisiana.
Rümeysa Oztürk was abducted by ICE simply for the offense of expressing an opinion that Palestinians in Gaza are being subjected to genocide. Her opinion was forceful but mild compared to the recent (May 27th) and emphatic conclusion of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy – knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”
She still faces an uncertain future as the Trump Justice Department continues to work toward her deportation.
Today’s post is free to everyone but please support this project with an annual paid subscription to The Daily Rhubarb at the link above…tc
Mahmoud Khalil
Mahmoud Khalil and his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, during an MSNBC appearance on June 28th
Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE officers in early March of this year, two weeks before ICE abducted Rümeysa Oztürk. In many ways, his seizure is the mirror image of her abduction, except that he was arrested at his New York apartment in the presence of his wife, Noor, who was eight months pregnant at the time. Khalil came to prominence in the Columbia University student protests against the Israeli siege in Gaza, had been more visible and vocal than Oztürk.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first public remarks on their abductions by ICE were inflammatory and untrue.
This is what Rubio said in late March in response a question about Oztürk’s abduction: ”If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you're coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that 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. If you lie to us and get a visa, then enter the United States, and with that visa, participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa.”
To which he added: "We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”
But two weeks later, in a court filing in response to the legal challenge of Khalil’s abduction and confinement, Rubio discarded the rhetoric about fomenting vandalism and “creating a ruckus” and conceded that while Khalil was not being accused of unlawful activities, it was his job, as Secretary of State, to determine whether “the alien’s presence or activities would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.” And, in Rubio’s view, Khalil would.
The federal judges who ordered the release of Oztürk and Khalil disagreed, specifically finding in Khalil’s case that the government likely violated his rights to free speech and would have difficulty prevailing at trial. The judge also ruled Khalil’s continued detention was unwarranted and, on June 20th, released him on bail pending his forthcoming trial. (It is, as yet, not scheduled).
His release brought a furious response from the Department of Homeland Security, chastising the judge for allegedly overstepping his authority in ordering Khalil’s release. In the meantime, Khalil’s wife had delivered their first born, a son, and also received her husband’s diploma in his absence.
On July 10th Khalil filed a $20 million lawsuit against Homeland Security and two other federal agencies, alleging he was falsely imprisoned, is being maliciously prosecuted, and falsely accused of being anti-Semitic.
—tjc
