No due process

 

Jeffrey St. Clair>>

+ A little after five in the evening on Tuesday, Runeysa Ozturk, a Ph D candidate at Tufts University, was accosted on the streets of Somerville, Mass., outside of Boston by hooded and masked agents, who initially refused to identify who they were and then falsely claimed they were “the police.” They were, in fact, ICE. Runeysa’s backpack, purse, and phone were seized. She was placed in cuffs, forced into a black van, and taken away. She was told her student visa had been revoked, and she was going to be deported. Ozturk, a Turkish citizen, was here legally, had committed no crimes, and wasn’t charged with a crime by ICE when they kidnapped her. Her sole offense? Co-writing an op-ed in the Tufts student paper opposing Israel’s mass killings of Palestinians. Even though a federal judge had ordered ICE to keep her in Massachusetts until a hearing on her status could take place, she was transported to an ICE detention jail in Louisiana.

+ On Thursday, Marco Rubio admitted that he’d personally revoked Runeysa’s visa and smeared her without evidence as being a terrorist sympathizer and a supporter of Hamas. “We do it every day,” Rubio boasted. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.” Rubio said he’s already revoked 300 student visas and intends to revoke many more.

+ So, there is no due process, even for people who have committed no crimes, which is the vast majority of people ICE has detained and attempted to deport. Due process was, of course, designed for people suspected of crimes. Not even the most cynical of founders envisioned it would be needed for people arrested and deported merely for having a tattoo or the name José or who might have been glimpsed at a campus protest against genocide.

+ It’s surely not the case that the top law enforcement officers in the US don’t know the Constitution; they just don’t think it applies to them and that the Supreme Court will bail them out if needed.