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Another Muslim Disappeared. A Constitution In Peril [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-29

Imagine you are sitting at home when you see a lone woman on the street suddenly surrounded by six people wearing hoodies and masks. The woman is physically restrained by these people, handcuffed, and forced into an unmarked car. What would you think is happening? Would you call 911 and report a possible kidnapping? Perhaps the police would arrive in the middle of it all guns draw, creating a very dangerous situation.

This happened Tuesday night to a Tufts University Phd student named Rumeysa Ozturk. The video is chilling.

https://youtu.be/bqn2w3wb1SU?si=pnysJ8Pf-xP4PVLs

What's more, after this abduction she was whisked over 1,500 miles away to a remote concentration camp and has not been seen since. She has not been charged with anything. She has not been allowed to talk to her lawyer.

The apparent basis for this treatment is that she wrote an editorial for the student newspaper. You can read that editorial, and I encourage you to do so, HERE.

The editorial does not advocate violence. It does not call for protests. The editorial does not support terrorism or endorse terrorists, or express any support for Hamas. In no way does the editorial express anything that might fairly be called antisemitism.

The editorial is mostly a call for the school to respond to votes by the student senate that condemned what the senate resolutions deemed the mass killing of Palestinians by Israel. The only call to action in the editorial is: "We urge President Kumar and the Tufts administration to meaningfully engage with and actualize the resolutions passed by the Senate." Does that sound violent to you?

I don't ask that you agree with the editorial. I do ask that we all understand that in this nation anyone and everyone is free to write such an opinion. Visitors included. Free speech is not just for Americans, it applies to visitors here too. The first five words of the First Amendment are, "Congress shall make no law." A law restricting the speech of visitors to this nation is as unconstitutional as a law restricting any citizens speech.

The Trump Regime seeks today to suppress an opinion of a visitor that the regime does not like. If they have that power to violate the Constitution do you really think it will end with visitors? Once the rubicon is crossed, where this Regime can do what the Constitution by it plain words forbids, where does it end? Who is safe from abuse?

There is another aspect of this. Ms. Ozturk was here on a student visa. If the argument is that she has violated the terms of her visa then advise her that her visa is revoked and that she must leave the country within a reasonably set deadline. She has not demonstrated that she is a threat to commit violence.

This snatching of people off streets, who have committed no crime, and who are charged with no crime, to ship them off to detention camps thousands of miles away to render them incommunicado is a tactic of fascism.

There is a reason the regime did this. It was to deny Ms. Ozturk access to the courts. It was to deny her due process. It is a tacit admission that regime knows that if tested in courts the regime would lose because the regime knows what it is doing does violence to our Constitution.

None of us are safe if the Regime can deny us access to the courts. Courts this same Regime seeks to dissolve.

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