Judge Ends Deportation of Hamas Sympathizer Rümeysa Öztürk

A U.S. immigration court has terminated the Trump administration’s attempt to deport a Tufts University student, her lawyers said Monday, NBCNews.com reports.

The student is a pro-Palestinian-Hamas activist who calls for BDS. Her visa was canceled by Secretary of State Rubio. She led radical protests at Tufts. You can search the Internet for her protests and concerning op-eds and find nothing.

The Story

The court terminated the government’s removal proceedings on Jan. 29, finding that it had not met its burden to prove that Rümeysa Öztürk should be deported.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson characterized the immigration court decision as “judicial activism” and called Öztürk a “terrorist sympathizer.”

“Visas provided to foreign students to live, study, and work in the United States are a privilege, not a right—no matter what this or any other activist judicial ruling says,” the spokesperson said in a statement Monday. “And when you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”

Turkish national Rümeysa Öztürk was accused of supporting Hamas [because she said she did].

The Law No Longer Matters

Öztürk was “granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa,” a senior spokesperson at the department told JNS. “A visa is a privilege, not a right.”

The case was based on the Secretary of State’s legal right to cancel visas and deport aliens. The immigration judge didn’t like the justification.

Öztürk was arrested on March 25 in Somerville, Massachusetts. In supporting her release from an immigrant detention facility, Tufts said in April that Öztürk had co-authored an opinion piece in the student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to the war in Gaza and demanding it divest from ties to Israel.

Stop Antisemitism wrote that Ozturk, after graduating from Columbia University, “led pro-Hamas, violent antisemitic, and anti-American events as a Ph.D. student at Tufts.”

The Judge Rejected the Administration’s Use of the Law

The Trump administration cited a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that allows the Secretary of State to deport noncitizens. It has to be determined that their presence would result in “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The pro-Hamas riots weren’t enough, or the administration didn’t present evidence. They relied on the law.

The filing on Monday included Öztürk’s lawyers and counsel from the ACLU of Massachusetts. It highlighted what they called the “dangers” of the government’s interpretation of the act.

They claimed her speech was the reason for her deportation. They went with the First Amendment.

Defense team member Mahsa Khanbabai gave a statement on Monday. She claimed that the Trump administration “has manipulated immigration laws to silence people who advocate for Palestinian human rights …”

It’s always the Soviet-like ACLU taking these cases on. They also train anti-ICE rioters.

Our enemies are using students to cause upheaval and chaos.