ISTANBUL
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used a special unit to detain Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk and other students who support Palestine, according to a report Thursday.
In March, masked federal agents seized Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student, outside her home in the state of Massachusetts. Footage showing her being handcuffed and placed into an unmarked vehicle quickly circulated worldwide. Ozturk had broken no law.
A federal trial that concluded Tuesday for the first time exposed the circumstances behind the images, revealing that the government had deployed a special team to single out Ozturk and other pro-Palestinian activists, paving the way for their highly unusual arrests, The Washington Post reported.
US officials utilized the immigration system in unprecedented ways to secretly investigate and detain noncitizen students, using a Homeland Security investigative unit that normally targets crimes like drug trafficking and human smuggling.
US District Judge William Young in Boston declared on Tuesday that the effort to target Ozturk and other students was clearly unconstitutional. The White House said it would appeal the ruling.
The bench trial, overseen by a judge instead of a jury, produced thousands of pages of testimony, transcripts and filings that revealed in detail how the arrests were carried out.
Key findings showed that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a close ally of President Donald Trump and the main architect of his mass deportation agenda, held more than a dozen conversations in March with senior State Department and DHS officials about revoking student visas.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that typically handles transnational crime, led the effort by researching protesters, referring dozens of cases to the State Department under an obscure visa revocation statute, and then executing the arrests.
HSI analysts gleaned more than 100 reports on protesters, a first, according to the official overseeing the operation.
In at least two cases, including Ozturk’s, HSI supervisory agents carrying out the arrests sought additional legal guidance, as they had never previously detained students whose immigration status had been altered.
White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Tuesday that Trump is “a staunch supporter and defender of First Amendment rights, but violent riots and student harassment are not protected speech.”
Although officials in the Trump administration repeatedly labeled the students as “terrorist sympathizers” and “Hamas supporters,” the trial presented no evidence linking them to any acts of violence or terrorism.