Momodou Taal, a British-Gambian Ph.D. student at Cornell, is trying to avoid detention and deportation. What did he do to deserve such a fate? He engaged in pro-Palestinian activism on campus. On Thursday, a judge denied his attempts to stop the Trump Administration’s efforts to deport him. Unfortunately, his student visa has already been revoked.
Taal has not been charged with any crimes.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national and grad student at Tufts University, was abducted by several masked immigration officials in a Boston suburb last Tuesday as she was going to an iftar dinner. She is allegedly being held in a detention center in Louisiana right now. What did she do to deserve such a fate? She was a co-author of an op-ed in The Tuft’s Daily criticizing Israel’s occupation and genocide and urging the university to divest from the country. A federal judge in Massachusetts said on Friday she can’t be deported without a court order.
Ozturk has not been charged with any crimes.
Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian grad student at Columbia University currently detained in a Louisiana detention center. He is a green card holder and is married to a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. What did he do to deserve such a fate? He was a lead activist in the pro-Palestinian protests on campus. His attorneys are urging a federal judge to free him and describing his imprisonment “as a ‘Kafkaesque’ ploy to chill free speech.”
Khalil has not been charged with any crimes.
To make it all worse, we now know that several immigrants who were kidnapped and sent to an El Salvador prison have zero connections to a Venezuelan gang. They were simply brown and tattooed. But why let due process and cruelty stop you from making a fascist ad? DHS Secretary and dog killer Kristi Noem released a video in which she stood in front of caged prisoners while wearing a $50,000 watch.
None of us are safe in the Trump regime. They are flexing their powers and normalizing their fascist behavior by going after the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. They are punishing innocent immigrants, college students, and foreign academics. They have expanded their targets to include law firms, media companies, and judges, and it will eventually include anyone who dares defy their authoritarian dictates.
In this Chai Talk, I talk to Momodou Taal’s attorney, Maria Kari, a human rights lawyer and Executive Director of Project Taha, which provides pro bono legal services for the most marginalized. In addition to outlining how this crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists is a chilling violation of free speech, Kari explains how it sets the stage for a broader assault on all of our rights. However, there is still hope with lawyers and judges, provided they choose actually to fight and not bend the knee.
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