Trump administration has no proof Tufts scholar was tied to antisemitism or terrorism earlier than ICE arrest, State Dept. memo says | EUROtoday

Donald Trump’s administration doesn’t seem to own any proof backing up claims of antisemitism and help for a terrorist group to justify the arrest of a Tufts University doctoral scholar who was grabbed off the streets by masked federal brokers and jailed in a Louisiana detention middle.

Lawyers for Turkish PhD scholar Rumeysa Ozturk advised a federal choose in Vermont on Monday that the federal government is in possession of no less than one memo that claims Secretary of State Marco Rubio doesn’t have enough grounds to revoke her visa and order her elimination.

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Last 12 months, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in a scholar newspaper calling on the college to divest from corporations with direct or oblique ties to Israel in an effort to carry Israel accountable “for clear violations of international law” for its marketing campaign in Gaza.

A memo from Homeland Security officers to the State Department and first reported by The Washington Post claims Ozturk “engaged in anti-Israel activism in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023.”

That language is equivalent to an outline of Ozturk on a web site run by pro-Israel activists who’re figuring out college students and activists who oppose Israel’s battle in Gaza for regulation enforcement. That group later appeared to take credit score for her arrest.

“Specifically,” Ozturk “co-authored an op-ed article” that “called for Tufts to ‘disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel,’” the memo mentioned.

Another memo from the State Department asserts that Homeland Security investigators and searches of presidency databases haven’t produced any proof that Ozturk engaged in antisemitic exercise or made public statements in help of any terrorist group.

Trump administration officers argue Ozturk could be deported below the Immigration and Nationality Act, which permits for a foreigner’s elimination if the secretary of state has affordable grounds to imagine the individual’s presence or actions has “adverse” international coverage penalties.

The Department of Justice has not shared the memos with Ozturk’s legal professionals, in accordance with Jessie Rossman, who’s among the many ACLU attorneys representing Ozturk in courtrooms to problem her arrest and elimination.

Judge Sessions had additionally questioned attorneys on whether or not the federal government has provided any proof to again up its allegations.

The administration is counting on the “unlawful use of immigration law as a cudgel to punish” activists “and send a clear message to other noncitizens that if you express opinions the government disagrees with you will also be punished,” Rossman advised District Judge William Ok. Sessions III on Monday.

“Guilt by association” by making an attempt to tie Ozturk to different activist teams attracts an “eerie comparison to what the government was trying to do during the Red Scare in the 1950s,” Rossman mentioned.

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Attorneys for Ozturk argue her arrest and detention are violations of her First and Fifth Amendment rights and are searching for her launch, amongst a wave of challenges to comparable arrests concentrating on worldwide college students for pro-Palestinian advocacy.

“Efforts to target me because of my op-ed in the Tufts Daily calling for the equal dignity and humanity of all people will not deter me from my commitment to advocate for the rights of youth and children,” Ozturk mentioned in a current assertion by her attorneys

Judge Sessions advised he may order Ozturk to be moved to Vermont from the Louisiana detention middle the place she has been jailed since final month, after plain-clothes federal brokers approached her on the road close to her condo and transferred her to a collection of Immigration and Customs Enforcement amenities.

The choose is more likely to maintain one other listening to in May.

Ozturk is working in the direction of her doctorate on the Eliot-Pearson Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She obtained her grasp’s diploma in developmental psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University, the place she was a Fulbright scholar.

She has remained contained in the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile regardless of a courtroom order following her arrest that she can’t be moved outdoors the state with out no less than 48 hours of advance discover to the courtroom.

Ozturk, 30, has repeatedly skilled bronchial asthma assaults inside the power. She wasn’t allowed to go outdoors throughout her first week on the facility, she wrote in a sworn assertion to the courtroom.

She shares a cell with 23 others, and the circumstances are “unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane,” and docs and nurses are “rude and uncaring,” she wrote. A nurse eliminated her hijab with out asking, she wrote.

“I pray everyday for my release so I can go back to my home and community,” she wrote. “I want to return to Tufts to resume all of my cherished work.”