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<\/p>\nby Jim Bovard<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“If it is known that authorities have power to coerce, few people will wait for actual coercion<\/strong>,” economist Friedrich Hayek<\/strong>\u00a0wrote in the 1956 foreword to his 1944 classic,\u00a0The Road to Serfdom<\/em>. Hayek\u2019s insight could be the Rosetta Stone for understanding the Trump administration\u2019s censorship zealotry.<\/p>\n On March 25, six masked federal agents seized a Turkish graduate student on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. Rumeysa Ozturk\u2014who was wearing a hijab\u2014was a Fulbright scholar working on a doctorate at Tufts University. Ozturk was snatched up because she co-authored a student newspaper op-ed a year earlier that criticized Israel, as I discussed here on March 31 (\u201cFirst They Came for the Op-Ed Writers<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u00a0denounced Ozturk as a “lunatic” and implied she was guilty of participating \u201cin movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0Ozturk was shuffled between detention facilities before being taken to Louisiana. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration\u2019s attempt to deport her without any judicial proceedings.<\/p>\n Ozturk\u2019s student visa was secretly revoked several days before she was taken into custody.\u00a0Did the Trump administration want a high-profile incident in order to deter any other students from writing op-eds or from protesting Middle East policies?<\/strong><\/p>\n On Sunday night, the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em><\/a>\u00a0detonated the Trump case against Ozturk by publishing extracts from a confidential State Department memo. Prior to Ozturk being seized outside of Boston, senior DHS official Andre Watson sent a memo to the State Department stating that,\u00a0\u201cOZTURK engaged in anti-Israel activism\u2026 Specifically, [Ozturk] co-authored an op-ed article\u201d that \u201ccalled for Tufts to \u2018disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n But the State Department found that no federal agency had turned up any evidence that Ozturk \u201cengaged in antisemitic activity or made public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0Despite Rubio\u2019s vilification of Ozturk, the feds didn\u2019t have squat on her.<\/p>\n DHS wanted Ozturk expelled from the US under a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that entitles the Secretary of State to deport any foreigner if there are reasonable grounds to believe their presence has \u201cadverse policy consequence for the United States.\u201d But there was no such evidence for Ozturk,\u00a0so the Trump administration instead used a legal authority under which the Secretary of State can deport anyone on his own decree<\/strong>\u2014no evidence required.<\/p>\n Because of her op-ed criticizing Israel, Ozturk vanished into the federal detention system, moved from state to state so the Trump administration could avoid a habeas petition in federal court challenging her detention. She was forced to wear leg shackles and a chain around her waist. She has asthma and had several attacks so far in lockup. At the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, she sleeps with 23 other people in a cell meant for 14. \u201cNone of us are able to sleep through the night. They come into the cell often and walk around triggering the fluorescent lights. They shout in the cell to wake up those who work in the kitchen around 3:30 am each day,\u201d she said. Ozturk stated that a federal officer\u00a0told her<\/a>: \u201cWe are not monsters. We do what the government tells us.\u201d So, of course, federal officials are blameless for any rights that they violate.<\/p>\n Ozturk is one of the most high-profile seizures that Trump\u2019s DHS has made of students who criticized Israeli policies in Gaza. Hundreds of student visas have been revoked and the Trump administration has floated proposals to\u00a0prohibit all foreign students<\/a>\u00a0from attending American universities that fail to fully suppress criticism or protests against Israeli policies.<\/p>\n It would be the height of folly for Americans to presume they face no peril from entitling the feds to seize boundless power to punish students\u2019 speech<\/strong>. Ozturk\u2019s name was provided to the Trump administration by Betar\u2014an organization that the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0characterized as a \u201cmilitant Zionist group<\/a>.\u201d US citizens are at risk as well. A spokesman for Betar declared: \u201cWe provided hundreds of names to the Trump administration of visa holders and naturalized Middle Easterners and foreigners\u201d who have criticized Israeli policies. The Anti-Defamation League condemned<\/a>\u00a0Betar as an extremist organization in February.<\/p>\n Any precedent for blanket censorship will propagate like a covid virus.<\/strong>\u00a0Many conservatives and libertarians may shrug off Ozturk\u2019s degradation because they have no interest in criticizing the policies of foreign governments. But the Ozturk case\u00a0hinges on collective guilt<\/strong>\u2014on assuming that anyone who advocates a position is culpable for any crimes committed by any other advocate with the same view.<\/p>\n This was the tacit doctrine that the Biden administration used to legally scourge peaceful January 6 protestors who merely \u201cparaded without a permit\u201d through or near the US Capitol that day. Because a minority of January 6 protestors became violent, the FBI presumed that \u201ctrespassing plus thought crimes equal terrorism,\u201d justifying harsh sentences for anyone at the scene (except for the undercover federal agents and informants).<\/p>\n What legal perils will pro-freedom protestors face in the coming years if the Ozturk rule is canonized, entitling federal officials to crush any disfavored opini<\/strong>on? Big-spending Democrats may consecrate Modern Monetary Theory and demonize anyone who criticizes the Federal Reserve. I took this \u201cKill the Central Bank\u201d photo of Ron Paul supporters at a 2008 Capitol Hill event for his presidential campaign. If the same protestors had peacefully carried the same banner within a half mile of the Capitol on January 6, they likely would have been nailed on a bevy of federal charges. Many politicians have made stark their hatred of libertarians and freedom advocates. A federally-funded Fusion Center\u00a0tagged<\/a>\u00a0Ron Paul supporters as potential terrorist suspects, and another federally-funded center sounded the alarm on anyone \u201creverent of individual liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n As long as anyone is sitting in shackles in a federal detention center simply for writing an op-ed, freedom of speech is not safe for anyone in the United States. Will Ozturk\u2019s persecution finally wake up people too confident that \u201cit can never happen here\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/inline-images\/rpcb.jpg?itok=lwPNv590\")
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