Free political speech is under attack.
International students and faculty from several universities, including Georgetown, Columbia, and Tufts, have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the past few weeks. While courts in Massachusetts and New Jersey have ordered freezes on deportations, and even prohibited them, ICE and the Trump administration seem to have willfully ignored these orders, transporting the students to detention centers across state lines without proper notice, and shrouding further actions regarding the students from the public.
ICE began targeting pro-Palestinian demonstrators on March 8, when they arrested Mahmoud Khalil, who is a student activist and was one of the main negotiators at the pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia University. His detention represents a broader expansion of deportation efforts from the Trump administration, which initially focused on undocumented migrants from Latin American countries. The administration has shifted its focus to legal visa or green card holding political dissidents. While the administration has claimed that their deportation efforts focus on students who go beyond marching–implying that their greatest concern is students inciting violence against Jewish students–after the arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk over an op-ed she co-authored in the Tufts Daily, its clear that the arrests are not aimed at improving our safety but at intimidating us and discouraging us from voicing our opinions regarding the U.S. government and the State of Israel.
Pro-Israel groups on college campuses have begun working with ICE to identify protestors seen a demonstrations on campuses. Efforts to identify and target these students has "blurred the lines between public law enforcement and private groups." Students, rightfully so, are worried about their legal status, and the outsourcing of surveillance occurring in the administration, and thus are foregoing speech altogether.
The concealed identities of ICE officers, the legal gray areas surrounding searches of personal devices at the border, and the unchecked power of ICE as an agency are all calls to action. While until now the courts have done their job in protecting those targeted by ICE, it's time for communities to step up and do the same. Even if the courts begin to challenge efforts made to target students, judicial review is seldom a speedy process. In the mean time, they will continue to unlawfully deport people. They will continue to abduct people from our streets. They will continue to target political speech. It's up to those of us who are lucky enough to be safe from ICE and the Trump administration in the mean time to fight for the rights of those who are not so fortunate.
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