> She was disappeared without due process or explanation
Then how do you know it was only because of an op-ed?
replies(6):
Then how do you know it was only because of an op-ed?
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/29/us/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-u...
Alleging that she was part of a larger group that committed crimes... but if that's the case, why didn't they arrest anyone else who was there?
edit: luckily enough people vouched for the story to be rescued.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/28/rumeysa-oztu...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/detained-tufts-student...
Her op-ed never mentioned Hamas by name. This seems to be the closest it came: "systemic changes that the collective voice of the student body is calling for are for the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination" — https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj
Despite the headline, the author admits they don't actually know that the op-ed was a reason for the arrest — "She was disappeared without due process or explanation — only later did we learn she had been renditioned to a detention center in Louisiana."
Is it simply because the border agents feel empowered under Trump or is it bigger than that?
“We revoked her visa. It’s an F-1 visa, I believe. We revoked it, and here’s why—I’ve said it everywhere, and I’ll say it again.
Let me be abundantly clear: If you apply for a student visa to come to the United States and you say you’re coming not just to study, but to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos—we’re not giving you that visa.
If you lie, get the visa, and then engage in that kind of behavior once you’re here, we’re going to revoke it. And once your visa is revoked, you’re no longer legally in the United States. Like every country, we have the right to remove you. It’s that simple.
It’s crazy—stupid, even—for any country to let people in who say, ‘I’m going to your universities to riot, take over libraries, and harass people.’ I don’t care what movement you’re with. Why would any country allow that?
We gave you a visa to study and earn a degree—not to become a social activist tearing up our campuses. If you use your visa to do that, we’ll take it away. And I encourage every country to do the same.
Every country has the right to decide who enters as a visitor. If you invite me to your house for dinner and I start putting mud on your couch and spray-painting your kitchen, you’re going to kick me out. We’ll do the same if you come to the U.S. and cause a ruckus.
We don’t want that here. Go do it in your own country—but not in ours.”
As an outsider, especially as one who visited the US every quarter for over two decades, and was asked every time on the purpose of my weeklong trip, I see nothing wrong with the deportation of someone in violation of their visa requirements.
I also don’t see how foreigners (or “aliens” as US law seems to prefer) can claim protection under the US Constitution. If the latter does provide it, that’s great, but frankly it makes no sense to me.
As a visitor to a country I expect to follow that country’s laws, and not expect any privileges which are afforded to that country’s citizens.
Please don't comment about the voting on comments.
Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit
If you need to discuss politics, then the easiest solution is to find another social media about the article - one that desires political comments.
Please downvote this comment.
Everybody, including the country's citizens, are also expected to follow the country's law. If you come to the US and get mauled, as a non-citizen you have the right to the same protection as anybody else. If you are suspected of mauling someone, as a non-citizen you are afforded the same rights to a fair trial as citizens. If it was legal in the US to beat up a foreigner because they are not protected by the law, it wouldn't be very safe for you.
This is the rule of law [0] and is a really important concept in modern democracy. This is why foreigners on US soil can expect some protection by the laws of the country, of which the constitution is the foundation.
> As a visitor to a country I expect to follow that country’s laws, and not expect any privileges which are afforded to that country’s citizens.
Visas indeed have additional legal requirements, typically around rights to work or study. It is unlikely that a US visa would specifically restrict speech or protests (you are welcome to check this in your visas), and so it is the rule of law that applies.
In short, what is being disputed here is not that a foreign citizen was deported for violating the law, but that the deportation was decided by the executive branch of government, which is a breach of the separation of powers.
The response by the government is that it is legal for them to rescind any visa arbitrarily. This is currently being debated hotly in the US, and is essentially the background for this article.
You're going to take the word of a lunatic who signed off on not just deporting random people, but shipping them into slavery at an El Salvador super prison? A dude who has an autism tattoo in support of his brother? A dude who has his soccer team's logo as his tattoo?
Rubio & this administration are deeply unserious, acting as capriciously as possible. There's been no evidence, and incredible refusal to even allow the courts their legal chance to review grievances filed for Alien Enemies Act, as is required.
Having the head of state going around bullying people who wrote to the college Op-Eds is insane. This is so far below their status. Rubio is pissing his panties because someone wrote an op-ed accurately and simply asking the college to please recognize & act on a lawful & decent vote by the Tufts Community Union Senate is not a horrible act. This isn't putting mud on the couch or spray painting a kitchen, this is very basic & civil free speech, and Rubio is pissing on the bill of rights that Americans for 250 years have been proud of. Because he's a monster & a coward, in bed with other monsters and cowards.
That used to be a good healthy rule, because down voting didn't used to be a systematic cover vile land stealing masochistic genocidal deranged people. But now there's an asymmetric force where bad people are systematically able to deny access to topics they find inconvenient.
The rules are inadequate & the crimes of this world too deep.
If people are so slammed incovenienced by having to skip over a couple posts they personally don't want to read, then a) fuck them, they are not too incovenienced, b) get over yourselves you shitty fucks, c) stop providing covering for vast human rights violations, rampant murder and starvation of children.
These rules used to work well, because complaining about down voting was because there were shitty pissants who would actively downvotes everything on systemd, or everything on Kubernetes, or everything about JavaScript. Today's there's enough up votes to deal with the haters, and these topics actually get a fair shake without negative comments immediately dominating any submissions. But it just wasn't real stakes. The fact that we lost a couple years of these topics being overrun by monsters wasnt great, but no one really enjoyed the complaining about that status quo of shitlords always winning. Today though, I think there's a lot a lot a lot of people sick to hell of the information system here being totally lopsided, sick of not being able to discuss DOGE, DOGE's desire to fire everyone & replace us all with mechanized unaccountable decision making, sick of not being able to discuss Israel being an absolute monster beyond words. The downvoting and flagging is totally out of hand, totally unacceptable, and suppressing the very real topics of our day from being even somewhat visible and it's a gross injustice, that we should be hacking towards better on.
I think that the suspension of due process in the home of Hacker News, the US, which was designed by its founders as a bastion of freedom from kings where people could pursue whatever their intellect desired with a guaranteed right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is important enough to merit discussion.
I think intellectual curiosity dies when due process dies, because if people can face arbitrary, excessive and (frankly) cruel punishment for thought crimes by the state, then what else is there?
Intellectually curious minds fled in the 1930s to the US when this happened in their nook of the world. And now, we're seeing the cycle repeat in their chosen nouveau homeland.
And on that note, it seems that you agree at least in theory that there has not been any actual evidence presented, yet you seemingly won't accept it because you still assume that writing an op-ed is the only thing they have done, and you've already made up your mind on this matter.
Why don't we wait until the evidence comes out before jumping to conclusions?
I think it's entirely possible the student could have actually done something wrong, and either Rubio is simply not revealing it, or he actually doesn't know the details and was only told smaller bits from someone else. OR, maybe the student did not do anything besides the op-ed and the government is blowing it way out of proportion... but either seems just as plausible to me.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8...
Eventually, the Supreme Court extended these constitutional protections to all aliens within the United States, including those who entered unlawfully, declaring that "aliens who have once passed through our gates, even illegally, may be expelled only after proceedings conforming to traditional standards of fairness encompassed in due process of law." The Court reasoned that aliens physically present in the United States, regardless of their legal status, are recognized as "persons" guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments
I wasn't trying to imply she was merely there, as Rubio is saying they participated. They never said the op-ed was related... so my question is, if the only reasoning is taking part in the protest, then why arrest nobody else who was there?
But allegedly folks are being told to get out for resharing a post or two. Maybe more evidence could come to light! I think the government has a strong mandate to make a very strong case.
But I am highly highly dubious more than a couple of these folks are doing anything even marginally bad (in fact many i think are doing great good speaking civilly & responsibly about very bad unnecessary human suffering being caused, which is patriotic as hell imo).
This is the administration blowing up the 1st amendment, having themselves a little tantrum. Rather than say anything real, Rubio's likening the situation to trashing the couch and spray painting the kitchen is an invented offense to mask how utterly inadequate & woefully juvenile this administration is behaving, how they have nothing whatsoever to justify this political violence they are casually inflicting.
Also notable that many of these universities rely on having international students to foot the bill for American students. Ruining this funding stream further's a strong desire the right has to end universities and college, which is incredibly low & cruel terrible for everyone except the incredibly wealthy. https://www.vox.com/politics/2024/2/1/24056238/conservatives...
What evidence? The administration has lready said in court that they have no evidence some of the men committed any crimes.
What's still being litigated is if the administration will be able to send any more flights to El Salvador.
The latest is because the US government is paying El Salvador $6 million dollars to keep these men incarcerated, the US essentially has jurisdiction over them.
Also, because some women were included by mistake, they had to be flown back to the US… so we know the US government could have them returned to the US if they wanted to.
What's the basis for how this works legally? Would the US no longer have commitments if the deal was done for free?
> Also, because some women were included by mistake, they had to be flown back to the US… so we know the US government could have them returned to the US if they wanted to.
Were they returned by request of the US? And does that mean that the US has to follow certain procedures as if those people were still under their jurisdiction?
It seems more likely that El Salvador rejected them because their prison is only for men.
Because people are being taken from the streets. The onus is on the people arresting her to show that they are in the right to do this. It's the United States and generally you expect people to be treated as if they're innocent until there's proof of their guilt.
If they don't know why they're do this then they shouldn't be doing it.
It's not that I trust them, I don't, and I disagree with their tactics too, which I think are being (slowly) dealt with politically and judicially, but again I don't think it inherently means everyone they arrest is completely innocent.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition *the Government* for a redress of grievances.
I agree with you that not providing evidence at the point of arrest isn't inherently indicative of ill intent but this administration refers to people wrongly arrested as "collateral," pays money for people to go to prison outside of American jurisdiction to make sure there's no fallout if they make mistakes etc etc. Is there no line where your trust level would shift?
It's entirely possible that isn't the case here though, I don't have enough information to say. If you're referring to Abrego Garcia, it later came out that the "administrative error" was due to an informant claiming he was a gang member, but I don't think there was ever any evidence of that, so I think it's still an unknown and an ongoing case.
Certainly I think everyone should be entitled to due process though, illegal immigrant or not. And I can't tell if many of this admin's actions are willful deception or gross incompetence, or both.
Your comment that they pay money for people to go to prison explicitly "to make sure there's no fallout if they make mistakes" sure seems unfounded and sensationalized to me though. It might look like that but I have not seen any proof that it's intentional in the way you say it.
> bastion of freedom; kings; liberty; cruel punishment; thought crimes; 1930s
These are all fine intellectually stimulating things which I believe are critical to inform ourselves and others about. HN is not stopping you from discussing them. HN is not a jail. The request is that you discuss politics elsewhere: please just use other forums that welcome political discussion. Nobody is preventing you from doing that.
Disclaimer: those are just one users opinions (my own) on how things seem to work here. I'm most definitely ignorant about what the managers of HN think. I too have a deep interest in politics and civics and I too struggle with the HN guidelines. YMMV.