{"id":52389,"date":"2025-04-26T15:03:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T15:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/52389\/"},"modified":"2025-04-26T15:03:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T15:03:13","slug":"in-trumps-america-it-can-be-dangerous-to-criticise-the-presidents-friends-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/52389\/","title":{"rendered":"In Trump\u2019s America, it can be dangerous to criticise the president\u2019s friends \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mahmoud Khalil<\/a>, Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk<\/a> and Kseniia Petrova are foreign graduate students in their early 30s. All were in the US<\/a> legally to study at Ivy League universities. Since February, they have been detained and threatened with deportation. Three are held in detention centres in Louisiana. Mahdawi\u2019s whereabouts are uncertain.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration<\/a> considers the three who criticised Israel\u2019s war on Gaza<\/a> anti-Semites and terrorist supporters. The fourth, a brilliant Russian scientist, opposes Vladimir Putin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Donald Trump\u2019s America, criticising the president\u2019s friends can be as dangerous as criticising Trump himself.<\/p>\n

The administration has rescinded the legal status of close to 1,000 international university students since mid-March, according to the Association of International Educators. Most have had their visas revoked without notice and have not been told what they have done wrong. Many prefer to \u201cself-deport\u201d \u2013 the administration\u2019s term \u2013 rather than be expelled by force. Secretary of state Marco Rubio<\/a> told a press conference last month that he had personally revoked more than 300 student visas, including those of Khalil and Ozturk, under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act which permits the deportation of noncitizens judged to be \u201cadversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests\u201d of the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist who tears up our university campuses,\u201d Rubio said when asked about Ozturk\u2019s case. \u201cEvery time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ozturk\u2019s \u201ccrime\u201d was to have co-authored an opinion piece in the Tufts University newspaper calling on the university to cut financial ties with Israel and denounce genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\"ProtestersProtesters hold signs in support of Rumeysa Ozturk at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Photograph: Taylor Coester\/Shutterstock\/EPA-EFE <\/p>\n

Khalil is a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Syria. He earned a degree in computer science at the American University of Beirut and once managed a scholarship programme in Lebanon for the British Embassy. He was to have received his master\u2019s degree in public administration from Columbia University<\/a> next month. His wife, Noor Abdalla, a dentist and US citizen, was about to give birth to their first child, a son, when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) seized him in the lobby of their building on March 8th. Khalil had led protests at Columbia against Israel\u2019s destruction of the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Hamas atrocities of October 7th, 2023.<\/p>\n

Mahdawi helped Khalil organise the Columbia protests but renounced activism in the spring of 2024. A refugee from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Mahdawi is a practising Buddhist. He had a premonition about the citizenship interview where he was instead arrested on April 14th, and met Senator Bernie Sanders and two other lawmakers beforehand. Jewish and Israeli-American students whom Mahdawi befriended at Columbia have spoken out on his behalf.<\/p>\n

Ozturk, who is Turkish, was a doctoral candidate in child development at Tufts University. She became alarmed when she learned in early March that a pro-Israel group called Canary Mission had \u201cdoxed\u201d her \u2013 posted her photograph and resum\u00e9 and denounced her for \u201canti-Israeli activism\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0US immigration judge rules Palestinian Columbia student Khalil can be deportedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

A shocking security camera video shows black-clad plainclothes officers with faces hidden swarming Ozturk on a Massachusetts street and bundling her into a waiting SUV on March 25th. She suffered asthma attacks during the overnight journey to New Hampshire and Vermont, from where she was flown to an Ice facility in Louisiana. The administration usually transfers those selected for deportation to states where judges support Maga ideology.<\/p>\n

Canary Mission is a far-right Jewish group whose self-proclaimed mission is to pursue those who promote \u201chatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses\u201d. The source of its financing and location are unknown, leading The New York Times to call it \u201cshadowy\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Khalil was also \u201cdoxed\u201d by Canary Mission. Immigration lawyers believe that Ice uses blacklists established by Canary Mission and another extreme pro-Israel group, Betar, to target critics of Israel. Betar has boasted openly of distributing a \u201cdeport list\u201d of 3,000 immigrants.<\/p>\n

\"ArtworkArtwork on the desk of Kseniia Petrova, a scientist who fled Russia after protesting its invasion of Ukraine, at Harvard. Photograph: Lucy Lu\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

Petrova was part of a team researching ageing at Harvard<\/a> Medical School. She was stopped at Boston\u2019s Logan Airport on February 16th, ostensibly for carrying petri-dishes containing frog embryos donated by the Curie Institute to her lab at Harvard, an offence that would normally carry a small fine. She had refused to hide her opposition to Putin and fled Russia days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Ice has rejected Petrova\u2019s lawyer\u2019s petitions for parole, saying she is a flight risk and a threat to US security.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Harvard sues Trump administration to stop the freeze of \u20ac1.9 billion in grantsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

EU staffers bound for the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington this week were provided with burner phones and basic laptops containing no record of their political opinions. The Committee to Protect Journalists this month urged journalists travelling to the US to leave personal phones or laptops at home. Before Trump, such precautions were taken only for travel to totalitarian countries.<\/p>\n

Americans, too, are fearful of Trump\u2019s assault on freedom of speech and opinion. \u201cWe are all afraid,\u201d the veteran Republican senator Lisa Murkowski said in Anchorage this month. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you, I\u2019m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk and Kseniia Petrova are foreign graduate students in their early 30s. All…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[5184,32,10982,18868,20418,2820,49,978,659,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-52389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-columbia-university","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-gaza-strip","11":"tag-harvard-university","12":"tag-israel-hamas-conflict","13":"tag-marco-rubio","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-usa","17":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114404878142859786","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}