#rumeysa — Public Fediverse posts

A federal judge Thursday decried what he said were
“breathtaking” constitutional violations
by senior Trump administration officials

and called the president
an “authoritarian” who expects everyone in the executive branch to
“toe the line absolutely.”

In remarks laced with outrage and disbelief,
U.S. District Judge #William #Young said Donald Trump and top officials have a
“fearful approach”
to freedom of speech that would seek to
“exclude from participation everyone who doesn’t agree with them.”

Young, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan,
leveled the searing critique during a hearing in Boston to determine the appropriate remedies for the administration’s ⚠️detentions of
pro-Palestinian students last year.

The judge had ruled in September that senior administration officials engaged in an 👉 illegal effort to arrest and deport noncitizen students based on their activism.

On Thursday, he again denounced the administration’s conduct in unusually stark terms.

“Talking straight here,” he said.

“The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries
and ostensibly,
the president of the United States,
are not honoring the First Amendment.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem
and Secretary of State Marco Rubio
engaged in an
“unconstitutional conspiracy”
to deprive people of their rights,
Young said.

“The secretary of state,” he noted,
his voice full of incredulity,
“the senior cabinet officer in our history involved in this.”

Spokespersons for the White House,
Noem and Rubio did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, last year called Young a “craven” judge who was “smearing and demonizing federal law enforcement.”

The government actions at the core of the case date to early March,
when the Trump administration launched a campaign to detain and deport noncitizen students at U.S. universities
who had been active in opposing Israel’s war in Gaza.

Though not accused of any crime,
those arrested spent weeks confined in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities,
at times hundreds of miles from where they lived,
before being released on bail.

The plaintiffs in the case are the American Association of University Professors
and the Middle East Studies Association.

The groups of scholars accused the administration of having an unconstitutional policy of deporting people based on their political views,
a policy intended to chill the free-speech rights of their members.

The trial last summer focused on the targeting of five noncitizen students and scholars: #Mahmoud #Khalil, #Yunseo #Chung and #Mohsen #Mahdawi, who were students at Columbia University;

#Rumeysa #Ozturk,
a graduate student at Tufts University;

and #Badar #Khan #Suri, a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University.

All were arrested except Chung,
who obtained a restraining order before ICE could find her.

The other four were released on the orders of federal judges,
but the Trump administration is still trying to deport them.

⭐️On Thursday, an appellate court in Philadelphia overturned a
Ruling lower-court ruling in Khalil’s case on jurisdictional grounds,
⛔️raising the possibility that he could be rearrested.

The president and other officials hailed last year’s detentions as part of a fight against "antisemitism", alleging without presenting evidence that the targeted students promoted violence or were pro-Hamas.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/01/15/protesters-trump-administration-free-speech-violations/

A delegation of five congressional Democrats traveled to Louisiana on Tuesday to visit
#Mahmoud #Khalil and #Rümeysa #Öztürk
in the immigration prisons they’re being held in and to demand their release.

The group of lawmakers, led by Rep. Troy #Carter (Louisiana), is the first from Congress to visit either Khalil or Öztürk since they were abducted by immigration agents last month and flown from their homes in New York and Massachusetts, respectively, to Louisiana.

The group also included Sen. Ed ##Markey (Massachusetts) and Representatives Jim #McGovern (Massachusetts), Ayanna #Pressley (Massachusetts), and Bennie #Thompson (Mississippi).
https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-travel-to-louisiana-ice-prisons-to-demand-release-of-khalil-ozturk/

A Turkish doctoral student who was grabbed off the street by plain-clothes federal agents -- in apparent retaliation for her op-ed criticizing Israel -- says her arrest and ongoing detention won’t stop her from speaking out.
Tufts University’s PhD student #Rumeysa #Ozturk
— among several international students targeted for removal from the country for their Palestinian advocacy
— remains in detention in a Louisiana facility while her lawyers argue in court for her release.
She has not been accused of a crime, and the government’s only apparent evidence against her is an op-ed in a student newspaper.

Attempts from Donald Trump’s administration to keep her in custody
“will not deter me from my commitment to advocate for the rights of youth and children,”
she said in a statement through her attorney on Thursday.

Last year, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily newspaper calling on the university to divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel in an effort to hold Israel accountable “for clear violations of international law.”
“Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide,”
says the op-ed, which was written with three other students and endorsed by 32 others.

Ozturk is working towards her doctorate at the Eliot-Pearson Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
She received her master’s degree in developmental psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University, where she was a Fulbright scholar
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-ice-court-hearing-b2727114.html

A federal judge in Massachusetts ordered on Friday
✅barred the deportation of a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, who voiced support for Palestinians in Israel's war in Gaza and was detained by U.S. immigration officials this week.

#Rumeysa #Ozturk, 30, was taken into custody by U.S. immigration authorities near her Massachusetts home on Tuesday, according to a video showing the arrest by masked federal agents. U.S. officials revoked her visa.

Her lawyer soon after sued to secure her release, and on Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union joined her legal defense team, filing a revised lawsuit, opens new tab saying her detention violates her rights to free speech and due process.

Despite a Tuesday night order requiring the PhD student and Fulbright Scholar to not be moved out of Massachusetts without 48 hours' notice, she is now in Louisiana.

⭐️In Friday's order, opens new tab, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston said that to provide time to resolve whether her court retained jurisdiction over the case, she was barring Ozturk's deportation temporarily.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-halts-deportation-turkish-student-tufts-2025-03-29/