Yesterday, chilling video emerged online of ICE pigs kidnapping University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was snatched off a Somerville, Massachusetts street while on her way to meet friends for iftar, as part of her observance of Ramadan. Although details are still emerging, it appears that like virtually every other international student targeted by Trump's immigration Gestapo, Ozturk, "a doctoral candidate in the university’s [Tufts] Child Study and Human Development department and formerly attended Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar," isn't being accused of a crime, but rather had her visa revoked for constitutionally-protected speech criticizing Israel's genocide in Gaza; in this case, an op-ed she wrote in Tufts Daily.

1) https://truthout.org/articles/tufts-student-activist-rumeysa-ozturk-abducted-by-ice-on-her-way-to-iftar/

Tufts Student Activist Rumeysa Ozturk Abducted by ICE on Her Way to Iftar

"Officials initially did not specify where Ozturk had been taken, and Khanbabai was unable to reach her. Later on Wednesday, Khanbabai said in a motion that she was informed by a senator’s office that the student was transferred to Louisiana. DHS agents also sent Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil to Louisiana, where he is being held in an immigration jail notorious for its abuses.

The transfer is despite the fact that a judge approved a petition barring Ozturk from being removed from Massachusetts without advance notice filed by Khanbabai on Tuesday. The Trump administration has been openly flouting court orders when it comes to its anti-immigrant onslaught; earlier this month, for instance, immigration officials deported Brown University assistant professor and doctor Rasha Alawieh to Lebanon, despite a judge having ordered the visa holder not to be removed.

Ozturk’s abduction comes just days after she was doxxed by Zionist vigilante group Canary Mission, advocates for Palestinian rights said. The group cited her activism against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including an op-ed published in Tufts Daily last year demanding that university leadership divest from Israel and condemn its slaughter of Palestinians."

Look folks, I don't know who needs to be told that surrounding and abducting an academic legally studying in the United States for writing an op-ed calling on Tufts to divest from Israel and condemn the genocide in Gaza, is textbook fascism, but it is. This is the kinda shit our government uses as justification for international sanctions and military intervention in non-democratic countries that happen to have large oil and gas reserves. Furthermore, as someone who has a number of close friends and colleagues who've been doxed by the assclowns at Canary Mission for nothing more than attending peaceful anti-genocide protests, I can't tell you how profoundly disturbing it is to even consider the possibility that the Trump regime is using their woefully baseless and politicized records to identify targets for deportation in America. This is fascist ideological policing, designed to intimidate Ozturk and other academics or students who would speak out; absolutely nothing about this is legal, or a legitimate attempt to protect public safety. We're literally snatching up scholars off the street for criticizing the government, Israel, a genocide, and apparently even the response of American universities to anti-genocide protests.

This McCarthy-esque bullshit isn't a warning sign of creeping fascism; this is Trump's all American fascist police state acting in broad daylight, with presumed impunity, to punish political speech and silence dissent. And while this represents an escalation of Trump's fascist war on student protestors, the situation is unfortunately all too familiar to Muslim American observers living in the United States under the still active logic of War on Terror policing.

https://archive.is/IlRY6

The New Video of Federal Agents Ambushing a Student and Disappearing With Her Should Chill You to Your Core

"As a Muslim American, in moments like these, it feels like there isn’t much else left to say. The Trump administration is trying to normalize a disquieting new chapter of something that’s happened now for nearly three decades. In that time, we’ve watched our communities surveilled, detained, blacklisted, and interrogated under the guise of national security. After 9/11, hundreds of Muslim immigrants were swept up and held without charge—some in solitary confinement for months. The NYPD mapped our neighborhoods, infiltrated our mosques, spied on our student groups at places like Yale, Rutgers, and the University of Pennsylvania. (I once discovered it kept a file on me.) None of it produced a single terrorism lead. These stories don’t just vanish when the news cycle goes on. They remain with us, in a country where many of us were born but will always be viewed with suspicion. The message has been clear: The government will find a reason to come for us."