Secretary of State Marco Rubio could not explain what rule and law Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk broke that warranted her arrest and detainment by masked plainclothes agents.
Freedom of speech against government intrusion and acts of war is a cornerstone of US democracy, which is why many foreign students want to come here.
Writing an op-ed is not causing a "ruckus" but demonstrating to the world how important freedom of expression is without the boot of fascist thugs stomping down on your neck.
REPORTER: A Turkish student in Boston was detained and handcuffed on the street by plainclothes agents. A year ago she wrote an opinion piece about the Gaza war. Could you help us understand what the specific action she took led to her visa being revoked?
What was your State Department's role in that process?
RUBIO: We revoked her visa. It's an F-1 visa, I believe. We revoked it, and here's why. And I'll say it again. I've said it everywhere. Let me be abundantly clear. If you go apply for a visa right now, anywhere in the world, let me just send this message out.
If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you're 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.
If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa.
And once you've lost your visa, you're no longer legally in the United States, and we have a right, like every country in the world has a right, to remove you from our country.
So it's just that simple. I think it's crazy. I think it's stupid. For any country in the world to welcome people into their country that are going to go to your universities as visitors, they're visitors, and say, I'm going to your universities to start a riot.
I'm going to your universities to take over a library and harass people.
I don't care what movement you're involved in. Why would any country in the world allow people to come and disrupt?
We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.
And if we've given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we're going to take it away.
I encourage every country to do that, by the way, because I think it's crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it.
We're just not going to have it.
So we'll revoke your visa, and once your visa is revoked, you're illegally in the country and you have to leave.
Every country in the world has a right to decide who comes in as a visitor and who doesn't.
Trump's war on universities continues. Writing an opinion that differs from Trump is not lying to get your visa, nor is it creating a "ruckus."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 99-0, offered a gleeful defense of the fascism on display this week with the arrest of Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk. Ozturk, who was here on a student visa that the government apparently revoked because she signed her name to op-ed calling for her university to recognize the genocide in Gaza and divest from Israel, was snatched off the street in Massachusetts by masked agents; she has been accused of no crime.
He did not discuss why such a violation couldn’t be handled with a call or a letter and a demand to leave within some number of days, rather than a Secret Police-style display of thuggery and a 1,500-mile flight to a Louisiana ICE detention center.
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An attempt to discover where in the Constitution or US statutory law the Ruckus Exemption to the First Amendment can be found has so far been unfruitful.
Is this America or Russia? Is this America or communist China?
