via @ eladnehorai on Instagram
I am speaking directly to my fellow Jews here when I say that we must vocally oppose the student deportations. You do not have to agree with the students and their opinions on Palestine, but you do need to agree that they have a right to due process and to free speech.
The Trump administration is using Jewish safety as a pretext to abduct people. One student, Rumeysa Ozturk, was snatched from the streets and whisked away to a detention center in Louisiana. Her crime? Writing an op-ed in her school newspaper arguing that Tufts University should consider the University Senate's vote to divest from Israel. You can disagree with her op-ed, but I hope we agree that she should not be detained for writing it. Days before her abduction, the State Department wrote in an internal memo that she was not connected any acts of antisemitism or support for terrorism. Before her abduction, she was targeted by Canary Mission for writing this op-ed. Groups like Canary Mission and Betar are actively creating lists of people to deport for perceived antisemitism or support for terrorism. They are doing this in the name of our safety.
Ozturk is not the only one. More students, some of them completely uninvolved in any activism about Israel/Palestine, are being abducted. For example, Alireza Doroudi, an international student from Iran, was abducted by ICE from his home in Alabama. DHS claims that he is a threat to national security but has provided no evidence. As of yesterday, over 1000 international students' visas have been revoked over the same "threat to national security" justification, which often invokes pro-Palestine activity as evidence. But many of these students, like Doroudi, do not appear to have participated in any pro-Palestine activity and are seemingly being targeted solely on the basis of their nationality. Which tracks, given that many of the students being taken are from majority Muslim countries. It's also important to add that being pro-Palestine is not a crime. Our country is rolling back the right to free speech, and it is doing so under the guise of fighting antisemitism.
Do not be so arrogant to think that they will not come for us, too. The law the Trump administration is using to justify these abductions is a Cold War era policy created to target Jews who were suspected of communist sympathies. The Trump administration and the Right do not actually care about antisemitism. If they did, his right hand man wouldn't be doing Nazi salutes at inauguration. The head of his antisemitism task force wouldn't be reposting tweets claiming that Trump can "revoke someone's Jew card." And don't assume you're safe because you're a citizen. Just this week, Trump repeatedly expressed the desire to send American citizens to CECOT in El Salvador (which is functionally a concentration camp). Oppose fascism wherever you see it. Even if it claims to be for your benefit. Even if you disagree with the people it's targeting. Firstly, because it's the right thing to do. And secondly, because tomorrow it might be you.
