Where Do You Draw the Line?

L ast year, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University named Rumeysa Öztürk co-wrote an op-ed for the school’s college newspaper complaining about the administration’s failure to respect student government demands for the university to divest from Israel. (Few seem to have read the piece; rather than a statement of antisemitic ideology, it is a bland “process” complaint about antisemitic ideology, larded with gratuitous quotes from James Baldwin — typically forgettable left-wing juvenilia, in other words.)

As a follow-up, on Tuesday of last week, plainclothes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained and then arrested Öztürk on the streets of Boston without prior warning. She now sits in a detention cell in Louisiana, awaiting a deportation hearing. Despite persistent rumors that “more is coming” with regard to Öztürk’s activities in America, to this point, the federal government has offered no public evidence against her beyond the op-ed — and in this case none is required. For the secretary of state is indeed granted statutorily broad discretion to remove noncitizens from the country, as Andy McCarthy has explained in detail over the past weeks.

Instead of specifics, Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded to questions last week about Öztürk’s arrest with broader claims:

If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus — we’re not going to give you a visa.

All sensible enough, as I hope most would concede. But this is an answer to a question not asked. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson adds that Öztürk purportedly “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” A serious claim, if true. But what activities? Before we simply take the government at its word, it would be wise to ask how exactly this administration — with its many other novel and controversial reinterpretations of the law — defines “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” Was Öztürk occupying buildings? Wiring money to Hamas? Worse? This is a claim with rather elastic definitions, depending on who the decider is. What are the actual allegations against her? Did she join a riot or merely join the wrong student associations?

I remain open to being persuaded by subsequent revelations, should they come. But if the case against Öztürk reduces to little more than her having written a column in support of the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement and/or her “not liking the Jews,” then I reject this. I reject it vehemently on a prudential, legal level and on a moral level.

Revoking a visa for criminal violence or active subversion is one thing, a commonsense matter of civic hygiene. But to capriciously eject people from the country without warning merely for publishing an unpopular political opinion in a student newspaper is, no matter what Trump’s defenders or special pleaders may beg, utterly abhorrent. I will accept the legal point, if you insist: No visitor or immigrant truly has a First Amendment right to free speech until the second after he has taken his formal oath of citizenship. And I will tell you in response that no modern administration has insisted on this standard before, and the idea that foreigners who are here on valid visas should live under fear that their every political opinion might become grounds for sudden incarceration in Louisiana or El Salvador is inhumane and close to un-American in spirit. Remember: Unless another shoe is about to drop, Rumeysa Öztürk hasn’t been accused of leading “Death to Israel” chants with a bullhorn or of occupying school buildings. She is accused of venturing a bad opinion in print.

Make no mistake: I yield to none in my loathing for antisemites and idiot protesters alike. And I agree that lawbreaking should earn any foreigner a one-way ticket home. But Secretary Rubio has indicated in his responses to this case that lawbreaking is not the issue; it is speech, and the nature of it. Regardless of whether his actions are within the bounds of the law, are you comfortable with immigrants being ejected for exercising basic speech rights? Are you comfortable with this novel standard being introduced? I am not.

Maybe you reject my ethical qualms. Even so, this sets a hugely dangerous precedent, one nearly limitless in its potential abuse. Again, I concede the secretary of state’s right to eject any noncitizen. But now imagine that power maximally interpreted, as Trump’s team has chosen to do, in the hands of the next several Democratic administrations. Which foreign-born individuals might the government choose to summarily eject from the country on the grounds of those individuals’ having expressed opinions contrary to the previous administration’s foreign policy? It wouldn’t be someone with negative opinions about Israel, I can assure you of that. It would be the next Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Douglas Murray, or Charles C. W. Cooke for that matter.

I have seen people cheer too many times as they watch the pitiless gears of government suddenly weaponized to crush their ideological enemies, unaware of how but for the grace of God they go untouched. Every time it happens, my long-dormant inner libertarian awakens, imagining those same gears grinding down on myself and those I love. Today, the victim may not be particularly sympathetic. Tomorrow — or ten years from now, but likely sooner — it might be your ox getting gored.

So, my question, to conclude: Where do you draw the line? I draw it here. I concede the legality of the administration’s act: It is probably within its right to revoke Rumeysa Öztürk’s visa and deport her. I reject the morality and the prudence of it. Deporting noncitizens for expressing unpopular political opinions (as opposed to committing crimes) doesn’t just violate the spirit of the First Amendment. It opens Pandora’s box: When this administration — and popular opinion — changes, as it inevitably must, this same malevolent spirit of the law, now unleashed, will be turned on us all.