A group of congressional Democrats visited two people unjustly detained by the Trump administration at Immigration and Customs Enforcement f
Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:
A group of congressional Democrats visited two people unjustly detained by the Trump administration at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Louisiana on Tuesday. The delegation—composed of Sen. Ed Markey and Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Troy Carter, and Bennie Thompson—called out the administration for violating the due process rights of detainees Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil. Öztürk is a Turkish national and graduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Witnesses who watched ICE agents accost and abduct Öztürk said the incident “looked like a kidnapping.” And Khalil is a former graduate student who attended Columbia University. Both are being held after the Trump administration asserted that their advocacy for Palestinians means they should be deported. “We have a moral obligation to stand with and unequivocally call out the injustices Mahmoud Khalil and too many others are suffering from at the hand of this administration,” Markey wrote in a Blue Sky post discussing his trip. In a video attached to the post, Markey added, “Khalil deserves due process from a system that respects his constitutional rights, not one that isolates him.” The Trump administration is conducting a crusade against free speech and dissent, and is abducting and deporting individuals based on the expression of their opinions. Part of the operation is being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has claimed the administration has the authority to expel legal residents for “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful.” In addition to the visit, Markey and Pressley, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, all of whom represent Massachusetts, sent a letter on Tuesday to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, pushing for information on why detainees like Öztürk were moved from Massachusetts to Louisiana after she was detained.
A delegation of Congressional Democrats-- Sen. Ed Markey and Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Troy Carter, and Bennie Thompson-- made a visit to Louisiana to see Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil, two students wrongly detained by the Trump Regime for their pro-Palestine activism.
