The US government had no evidence that Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk had engaged in “antisemitic activities” or made public comments in support of US-designated terror organizations before she was detained by ICE agents, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.
The report said that days before Ozturk’s arrest, the State Department determined that Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t have the authority to revoke her student visa under an authority the administration is attempting to use to deport critics of Israel.
Ozturk, a PhD student, was targeted for co-authoring an op-ed last year that called for Tufts University to divest from Israel and “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
The Post report said that the Department of Homeland Security had recommended to the State Department that Ozturk’s visa be revoked under an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that allows deportation of someone if the secretary of state has “reasonable grounds to believe” their presence would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
The DHS said that Ozturk had engaged in “anti-Israel activism” and referred to the op-ed she co-authored. Ozturk was first targeted by pro-Israel groups, including the Canary Mission, which doxxes students and professors who are critical of Israel. The Canary Mission’s page on Ozturk lists only the op-ed as an example of her “anti-Israel activism.”
The State Department found there was not sufficient evidence to deport Ozturk under the provision DHS recommended. Instead, the State Department said she could be deported using another authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows for the revocation of a visa at the secretary of state’s discretion, according to the Post.
Ozturk was detained in Massachusetts on March 25 and is now being held in an ICE facility in Louisiana. In a declaration obtained by NBC News on Sunday, Ozturk said she was being held in “inhumane” and “unsafe” conditions and that her asthma was not being properly treated.
Footage of Ozturk being arrested by masked federal agents provoked widespread condemnation of the Trump administration’s crackdown on speech critical of Israel. Ozturk said in the declaration that she was terrified during the arrest and thought the agents were “private individuals” who might kill her.
According to Pew's 2023-24 Religous Landscape Study 23% of Americans are Protestant Evangelical (all denominations) and 2% are Jewish. https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/
They can't all be hardline zionists/supremacists but whatever their number they sure seem to be punching above their weight in the decline of this country.
I was brought up in a branch of evangelical Christianity that was extremely "pro-Israel" (Pentecostal denominations including Pentecostal Church of God then Assemblies of God).
I was surprised as an adult to run into evangelical Christians (individually and in congregation/denomination) who either doubt or reject the claim that the state of Israel represents a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, but they do exist.
One problem with the visibility on that is that the "pro-Israel" congregations/denominations have long since been co-opted as political actors on the basis of their belief, while the subject is either non-political or way down the priority list for the "non-pro-Israel" evangelicals.
I remember the Pew Study noting evangelical political growth. I was raised Christian, mostly Episcopalian, with occasions of Southern Baptist and Methodist but I was a 60s flower child and explored a lot of faiths throughout life. Of the evangelicals I met Israel was not a part.
I’m under the impression that the large evangelical Zionist base was built in the 1970s, right about the time they were trying to indoctrinate me and presumably as part of the growth of the “Religious Right” coalition in the US. That was also about the time that evangelicals started getting wound up about abortion, which had previously mostly been an issue of importance to Catholics.
I didn't experience it neither young in the 60s southern baptist church of my grandmother nor my brief mid 90s association with a vy small church in the deep south, I can't recall the denomination.
"I was a 60s flower child and explored a lot of faiths throughout"-
psst – yr dhoti barn door's open…
Poor woman. I read her op-ed, nothing hateful about it.
Now, Trump is defying SCOTUS and not returning the guy he sent to a Salvadorian prison (unrelated to Israel).
Will he be held in civil contempt, or stick a fork in it, we’re done? No more law.
Even if it was "hateful" (after all, we're talking about a virulently racist and genocidal settler-colony regime calling itself "Israel", not a legitimate state), she still did nothing wrong. "Israel" is evil. The Trump regime is not going to save its genocidal vassal by deporting all foreign visitors and students who dare criticize or protest against it.
Of course, as Betar and Canary Mission and StopAntisemitism have made clear, the next step is targeting naturalized citizens and stripping them of rights and citizenship and getting deported (something Bahrain and Saudi Arabia already do to their indigenous Shia peoples), and then once that's in play, setting up the mechanism to strip native-born Americans of their rights and citizenship and making them totally stateless like the Palestinians.
This is what is coming if this thuggish gangsterism is not stopped. Any native-born American who supports this BS because they hate foreigners and Muslims is going to get a rude awakening when the Zionist commissars determine they are not sufficiently deferential in bending the knee to their Zionist masters and finding themselves sent to camps with the very people they were bigoted against and newly stateless.
If it does that far, Trump will have succeeded in destroying America and turning this regime into an all-out Zionist dystopia.
The writing was on the wall before Trump. The scaffolding constructed under Democrats. The criminalization of speech began: see the Uhuru as one example.
Aside from my horror at the inhumanity, my empathy, I tried to warn people that we are all Palestinians. If you get in the way of empire, or their masters, you’ll be eliminated. Flouting international law, threatening to punish even those intended to uphold it, doubling and tripling down on progressing genocide was the opening act, act 2 and 3. Albeit with a faux concern mask.
People existed in bubbles where they compartmentalized the atrocities, from their grocery bills or identity politics, as “one issue”. Apparently as an insignificant one. Putting aside the immorality or abandonment of ethics of ignoring the suffering, people denied the underlying threat to themselves, as also insignificant beings to TPTB.
Trump was not the anti/deep state, he was a direct tool to get the job done. In my opinion, the Democrats took an intentional dive.
"The criminalization of speech began [under Democrats]: see the Uhuru as one example."
"Uhuru"? Think yr a little confused, existential:
Lieutenant Uhuru was the Communications Officer on the Starship Enterprise in the 1960s t.v. show Star Trek.
In Swahili her name means beauty.
Are you turning into Uncle Sapien with dad jokes?
personally, sometimes complete idiocy is a temporary release…it kinda' wells up…
I hear that.
Works for me !!
Holy hells I was JUST about to make that joke but M-1 Abrahmsawicz beat me to it !
Thought of you immediately. You’re rubbing off on us.
Hooray ! And I’m sorry.
"the next step is targeting naturalized citizens…then… native-born Americans"
Even short of successfully deporting US citizens, the state deporting the most vulnerable, to a notoriously hideous prison – and declaring its intention to deport US citizens – intends to terrify citizens into silence.
And of course, knowing that is happening – watching it happen – is frankly terrifying.
And of course, now, that is just one means of govt. attacks on First Amendment speech/gathering.
Careful what you say my friend.
The president then gave a terrifying glimpse at the next step in his plans for mass deportation.
“Homegrown criminals are next. Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns,” Trump told Bukele, confirming that he wants to deport American citizens, a move that would violate the Constitution and test the courts more than ever before.
Trump to Bukele: "Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2025
https://newrepublic.com/post/193985/trump-deport-homegrown-criminals-el-salvador
Trump and various White House officials have repeatedly floated the idea of sending U.S. citizens to El Salvador and other places — something legal experts have said would be flatly unconstitutional.
On Monday, during a spray with reporters, Trump said his team was "studying" the issue.
"If it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem," Trump said. "Now we're studying the laws right now, Pam [Bondi] is studying. If we can do that, that's good."
"And I'm talking about violent people. I'm talking about really bad people. Really bad people. Every bit as bad as the ones coming in," he continued.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/homegrowns-trump-doubles-sending-convicted-us-citizens-foreign/story?id=120802863
He previously said he was talking about “violent” people. But he shipped off a gay dude, hair stylist, with tattoos that said “mom” or “dad”, I forget. His crime was radical haircuts, ffs?
They included a gay makeup artist, a professional soccer player, and a food delivery driver who were in the U.S. legally seeking asylum but were apparently targeted for deportation because they have tattoos.
Now how can anyone disagree with that logic? /s
"'deportation because they have tattoos'?….
Now how can anyone disagree with that logic?"
dunno, wars…a heart w/'mom' on it?…you sayin' that doesn't strike you as the least bit fishy?…
"…deportation because they have tattoos'?….a heart w/'mom' on it?"
I mean, it abides by one Old Testament commandment while violating another OT law. So in terms of contradictions it's spot-on I guess.
There is something directly and completely biblical about that.
It is possible the deportees were wearing mixed fabrics, ate shellfish, OR planted two different crops in the same field. Those, like tattoos, also biblical "crimes".
Horses are next. They love "hay HAY hay" !
"You gotta build about five more places…"
Five more of WHAT places ? Guantanamoes ? Hondurasses ? Leavenworths ?
It goes without saying that what these people are being put through is terrible. However, it is ultimately necessary because it is exposing this despotic regime in Washington for the fraud that it is and has been since Lyndon Johnson, who was the first true Zionist president of this country. The "American Dream" died when Kennedy was murdered, and every president since then has been an out-and-out Zionist fanatic with each one attempting to outdo the other, with Biden being the most ridiculous example of subservience to date.
The more this happens, the more foreign students will stay the hell away from the USA, which means colleges and universities lose massive amounts of cash, since foreign students are their principal source of revenue and are a literal cash cow. Without foreign students, American academia will go totally bankrupt which will boomerang across the rest of the spectrum. Canada, Australia, and Europe (and increasingly China) stand to gain the most from these actions, so I hope all those aspiring to continue their higher education in America think twice. This is not the right country to spend good money in. All the great and unique talents of the world will stop coming here and either work to benefit their own countries (the ideal situation since brain and talent drain can destroy a nation) or help improve a more deserving host nation.
With these actions, Trump is obliterating the idea of America as the "leader of the free world." That myth has been totally shattered since at least Clinton in the 1990s (even more so by Bush in the 2000s), but the Biden regime and the Zionist Democrats took American despotism and tyranny to unprecedented heights and set everything up for Trump and the GOP to continue driving this country into oblivion.
It's also increasingly becoming clear that federal agencies like ICE are being run like plainclothes secret police and street gang and drug cartel tactics. This is a whole new level of tyranny and it is more than possible that these "agents" are simply deputized MAGA activists recruited from campaign rallies. I wouldn't be surprised when everything finally hits the fan that what they are doing is not legal at all because none of these jokers look or act professional.
I have to hand it to Trump. He really, really hates America.
REARMAMENT: THE CHARADE AND THE GAME OF CHICKEN
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/rearmament-the-charade-and-the-game-of-chicken/
Mass Migration & the Echoes of Late Rome
April 10, 2025
In its greed for power, domination, resources and wealth, the West, says John Wight, is headed for the same fate as Rome all those centuries ago.
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/04/10/mass-migration-the-echoes-of-late-rome/
How the Global Elite Are Replacing America
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Ad2kzAzak
Shahid Bolsen has some nasty skeletons rattling in his closet, but his brutal takes seem closer to the truth than most.
That is one thing I had in mind when I recently pleaded for foreign students boycotting visiting the US.
But are they indeed universities' principle source of revenue?
How long before the Trump administrations starts arresting Americans? he already said Salvador prisons are a good place for so called homegrown criminals…I hope Tucker Carlson has a residence in a foreign country. The terrorism catchall can include speech offenses too.
DHS told her to leave the country. She's a citizen and an immigration attorney
When Massachusetts resident Nicole Micheroni received an email on Friday from the federal government telling her to leave the country, she was baffled.
"At first I thought it was for a client, but I looked really closely and the only name on the email was mine," said Micheroni. "So it said my parole status had been terminated and I should leave the country within seven days."
But the 40-year-old is a U.S. citizen, born in Newton and raised in Sharon.-NBC News Boston
The next steps are for the administration to admit it screwed up, but then kidnap and deport her anyway and claim it can’t bring her back because that would “interfere with the presidential power over foreign policy” found nowhere in the US Constitution.
I feel sick upvoting this, but you’re right.
You see this, Knapp? China is giving the screws to Trump in ways he can’t push back. How does that affect his support? Or will the MAGAs just join the bloodlust for war?
China is going after MAGA, and there’s likely nothing Trump can do to save them this time
The Chinese government over the past four months has halted or significantly curtailed direct imports of major U.S. commodities including beef, poultry and liquefied natural gas through an array of bureaucratic blocks and tricky third-party sales deals.
The so-called nontariff barriers to trade are even stickier than the escalating tariffs rippling across the global economy, analysts said. All together, the moves are an escalation of the curbs China has been honing since its bans on genetically modified foods a decade ago. And they provide Beijing added firepower in the ongoing U.S.-China trade war by targeting exports from Trump-friendly, deep-red states — think Iowa and Nebraska — with restrictions immune to possible workarounds for tariff barriers.
https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/04/china-is-going-after-maga-and-theres-likely-nothing-trump-can-do-to-save-them-this-time.html
In a US-China trade war, if I had to bet, I’d bet the US caves first. Americans want China’s cheap stuff worse than Chinese want America’s expensive stuff.
And the biggest US exports to China are agricultural stuff that already took a beating during Trump’s FIRST term. He tried to make up for that with increased welfare checks to Big Ag, and he’s doing it again, but he’s abducting/deporting a lot more people this time around, and 3/4 of US farm workers are immigrants. So we can expect a lousy harvest, too.
China's 'cheap stuff' was engineered and QC by Americans, they just made it and sent it back here to break US unions and keep the proletariat anxious about losing jobs, as well as keeping down wages. It's all a scam of the uni-party for more power and money as always.
Yes, some of the stuff made in China now was originally engineered in the US. Just like some of the stuff made in the US now was originally engineered in China.
Real US wages have been increasing for decades and the US manufactures more now than it ever has before.
US unions were mostly broken by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act — which was passed for the express purpose of bringing them to heel — and the later Taft-Hartley amendments.
And, don’t forget the Reagan years that started it up again and it continues today. And, wages haven’t kept up with inflation, which means it reality, they didn’t really rise for the benefit of the workers.
The whole point of the term “real wages” is to account for inflation. But if you want it put at sixth grade reading level: “Even after inflation, the median American wage today is more than 30% higher than it was when Reagan left office.”
Without a properly respected, functioning legal system, the Constitution is dead, D E A D Dead, just some scraps of paper under glass.
It died a long time ago. Spooner wrote the following in 1867:
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
Thanks, that's interesting.
Trump said he thought US citizens should deported, not immigrants, not green carsds,. Nnative US citizens – if they were violent – criminals.
But, but, they are "really bad people". And they are "every bit as bad as the ones coming in". Now, how can we not trust King Donald? /s
Even with the wars, economy & 1a rights shipping US citizens, violent criminals or not, to Ecuador torture chambers hit an immoral depth unimaginable and really angered me. We are so far from the principles upon which our constitution was conceived, I don’t even recognize this country anymore.
Even with the wars, economy & 1a rights shipping US citizens, violent criminals or not, to Ecuador torture chambers hit an immoral depth unimaginable and really angered me. We are so far from the principles upon which our constitution was conceived, I don’t even recognize this country anymore.
"But, but, they are "really bad people". And they-"
Whoah – You do condemn "really bad people"…well doncha'? I mean, jesus – you're making me feel unsafe here…
Since when does any administration follow the Constitution today?
Rather more to the point, they can't have any such "evidence."
The United States – owned and operated by the state of Israel: lock stock and barrel.
It looks much more like Trump owns the US. The US has become a
gianttremendous cultist commune around Trump. It takes place so smoothly and with such breakneck speed that it almost is as if it has been planned. And yet it appears outwardly as just the product of chaos and stupidity, hubris and ignorance-driven incompetence. It is a sight to behold. It looks a bit like a whole society has been washed away in a tsunami of insane clownery, everyone struggling to hold on to the nearest piece of wreckage that's hard to recognize of what it was once part of. This cannot be undone. And it looks like it is all down from here, faster and faster.I'm going to go with chaos and stupidity, hubris and ignorance-driven incompetence, for the simple reason that it is consistent with the past 35 years of rule from the white house.
You have a good point there. I'll let it inform my skepticism.
Trump owns nothing, the Zionists own America and Trump is just the handler and latest puppet. Don't forget the previous administration, which so many people who are members of the two party system do every time there's a new administration. Both are equally evil, and each new one takes the evil to the next level.
I don't think either the Democrats are in any way shape or form a remedy for what is happening now. They are themselves beyond redemption and repair. They need to be dismantled entirely, excised of their corruption and billionaire loyalties and their dependence on lobby money before they can hope to be built up again.
So that is not going to happen.
Jürgen Habermas, Theory of communicative action, and John Rawls, Political liberalism, inform my view here.
Habermas' tenet is that when in a society and politics 'strategic action' outweighs 'communicative action', politics and society will gradually fall apart.
Communicative action requires the values of reason and truth and virtues like veracity.
That's not easy, people being what they are. We are very, very far away from it.
I think, and I am allowing myself to be informed by observed behavior of Trump's cabinet members, congressional Republicans and the exclusive lawfirms with their billionaire clientele and a bunch of billionaires themselves, narrow self-interest and the prospect of monetary gain pitted against the fear of falling out of grace and the gravity of the consequences prevails over values nearly always. Truth, reason, rationality and certainly veracity are small sacrifices to make.
Or perhaps all those folks hanging with their lips to Trump's arse are all true believers by way of inordinate amounts of selection pressure. Maybe if you look closely you can see their souls evaporate.
"The US government had no evidence that Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk had engaged in “antisemitic activities” or made public comments in support of US-designated terror organizations before she was detained by ICE agents."
Even if – EVEN IF – Ms. Ozturk had done BOTH, and even as a non-citizen, she is still protected by the First Amendment and guilty of nothing but disagreeing with extant Government policy and Special Interest Groups.
And the irony of Biden’s remark that “no Jew anywhere is safe without Israel”:
Israelis moving to live in Europe
A report released on Wednesday by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research will detail for the first time a dramatic reversal of decades of net outflow to Israel from Jewish communities in Europe.
“We can say that culturally and demographically there is a real turning point. Possibly the end of an era,” said Dr Daniel Staetsky, the report’s author. “The founders of the state of Israel would never have imagined that it would be Israel that would be rejuvenating European Jewish communities, not the other way around.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/17/israelis-moving-live-europe-rejuvenating-jewish-communities
Both Orwell and Kafka were prophets. Thought police to stop anti-semitism and make arrests, when no crimes have been committed.
@cjgeek:disqus
How deep can those-in-power sink? To the centre of the earth, I thought. Seems logical – if they sink further, in the end they come out on the other side.
Then I realized that that logic does not apply to those in power.
They are in another dimension, in which they can sink infinitely deep.
p. s. First I wrote this about politicians, but it is not just them (think of micimatt). I find it dissatisfying to just talk about politicians, and unfair to some of them.