posted March 27, 2025 02:37 AM
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Ph.D. scholar on a student visa at Tufts University, was walking down a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Tuesday night to meet friends to break her Ramadan fast when a man in a dark hoodie and baseball cap crossed the street toward her. Chilling surveillance footage shows the moment he approaches: “Excuse me, ma’am,” he says politely, his tone disarming. Ozturk hesitates and tries to sidestep him. Another man in plainclothes appears across the street. One reaches for a radio. The other moves in. Watch, with the sound on:One of the men goes for her phone. The other grabs at her hands. Ozturk screams. Shock and fear ripple through her voice. Two masked women join them, tugging at her backpack, peeling the straps from her shoulders. “I’m going somewhere, I need to call someone,” she pleads. “We’re the police. Relax,” one of the men says in response.
They surround her. Then, one by one, they pull their neck gaiters up to cover their faces. “You don’t look like police,” a voice off screen says. “Why are you hiding your faces?” The questions continue, but the figures don’t respond. Instead, they cuff Ozturk, cross the street, and put her in an unmarked SUV. She is gone.
The video is haunting. You can see Ozturk’s panic set in, and the clear impunity the agents feel in taking her and vanishing with no explanation. Just days after the Trump administration successfully pressured Columbia University to ban masks at campus demonstrations, these agents concealed their identities and arrived in an unmarked vehicle, asserting only that they were the authorities, period.
Ozturk’s lawyer later said she hadn’t been able to contact her and had no idea of her whereabouts; the New York Times reported she appeared to have been moved to a facility in central Louisiana, as with Mahmoud Khalil, whose own shadowy deportation case has been at the forefront of a constitutional crisis. (Khalil, a Columbia graduate and lawful permanent U.S. resident, was detained and accused—again without evidence—of supporting Hamas. His green card was revoked, and he was taken away from his eight-months-pregnant wife, a U.S. citizen. He too also briefly disappeared.)
It would be hard to believe this scene was happening in the United States if this was not the explicit and proud policy of the Trump administration. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson later claimed Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization.” The person said Ozturk, who is from Turkey, had had her student visa revoked.
To be perfectly clear, Ozturk is not accused of breaking the law. The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t bothered to explain its reasoning, but several outlets reported that Ozturk co-authored a student opinion piece urging Tufts to recognize the International Court of Justice’s declaration of a “plausible risk of genocide” unfolding in Gaza and to divest from Israel. You can read the article if you like. It does not mention Hamas.
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.
So when the campus protests began this fall, many of us knew what was coming. Anonymous organizations like Canary Mission have long targeted Muslim and pro-Palestinian students, building digital dossiers. These groups inflict fear on others by pretending to be afraid; they know this country has a long history of going along with arresting Muslims and asking questions later. It’s not officially confirmed that they groups coordinate directly with agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement or DHS, but there’s mounting evidence that their blacklists are being treated as informal intelligence sources. After an earlier Trump executive order on campus antisemitism in 2019, these groups began flooding the Department of Education with complaints about pro-Palestinian students. Universities have cited Canary Mission when launching investigations. According to the Times, Ozturk had begun reaching out to friends to remove any trace of her online once Canary Mission posted her information, fearing escalation. Her fears were clearly warranted.
By now, this shouldn’t feel like a surprise. But with Ozturk’s case—a brazen state abduction, in daylight, on video—it feels like a new threshold has been crossed. When the government rolls up on a young woman on the streets with no charges, no warning, no transparency, how else can you describe it? It doesn’t matter if you have a green card, a visa, or, maybe, any legal status at all. Each new case is pushing the limits of the law, and the Trump administration has already made it clear it doesn’t care if the courts try to stop what it’s doing. Most Muslims in America with any kind of public life have imagined themselves in this position. Before long, it might not just be us. Watch the video of this arrest again and ask if you can see yourself in it. Maybe it’s time to start.
Lindaland
UBBFriend: Email This Page to Someone! 
posted March 27, 2025 02:36 AM
posted March 27, 2025 12:57 PM
posted March 27, 2025 02:30 PM
posted March 27, 2025 07:37 PM