While ice stops international students, a legal scholar weighs: NPR

On March 25, Rumeysa Öztürk, a 30 -year -old Turkish doctoral student at TUFTS University, had just released for dinner when she was arrested in the street by six federal agents in masks and simple clothes. Although Öztürk owned a valid F-1 F-1 student visa, he had been dismissed, apparently without warning. A judge ordered him to be detained in the Massachusetts, but the authorities transferred him to a detention center in a remote part of Louisiana.

The case of Öztürk is not isolated. After last year’s demonstrations against the war in Gaza, the Trump administration said that it would retract “Hamas sympathizers on university campuses”. And ice agents have descended into university cities across the country in recent weeks. Students were arrested in Columbia, the University of Minnesota and the University of Alabama.

Boston College law professor Daniel Kanstrom has studied the impact of immigration policy over the past 25 years. He says that the rounding of students who are legally here is designed to “send a message, … to scare people”.

“This is a horrible thing to see,” says Kanstrom about Arrest of Öztürk. “You might think that tactics like this would be limited to the most extreme cases – swat teams or hostage situations – but to see a graduate student in Somerville, Mass., Finished the street; it had to be terrifying.”

Kanstroom is the founder of the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Clinic, where law students plead for indigent non-citizens and asylum seekers. He also directs the human rights post-carrying project, which explores the long-term impacts of expulsion on families and communities. He says that even if the government has the right to control its borders, when this power is exercised, “it must respect the dignity of the person who is the subject of the exercise (the government) of massive power”.

And, he adds, although this moment is particularly heavy for many, it is useful to remember that “we have already seen moments like that in American history”.

“(These moments) tend to inspire great solidarity and great forms of activism and resistance, which ultimately led to legal reforms, important judicial decisions and a better understanding of the rights of all of us,” he said. “Not being too big on this subject, but I think it is a recurring struggle for the soul of the country. These problems are really fundamental. What kind of country are we?”

Strengths of the interview

In case of Kilmar Armando Abrego GarciaA man from Maryland whom the Trump administration was mistakenly sent to a prison in El Salvador

(Abrego Garcia) had been under the ordinance of an immigration judge specifically so as not to be sent to Salvador. The government admitted that it was a mistake. And yet, they say, well, but there is nothing that we can really do there because he is now under the guard of El Salvador. It is difficult to imagine a set of facts more terrifying than that.

And once again, although we have seen episodes of massive deportation application throughout the history of this country … It is difficult to think of an episode that has been marked by this kind of intimidation and, as I say, unnecessary cruelty. These things can be done in order. They can be made with respect for human dignity and respect for the law – and they are not made in this way now.

On the political strategy to target documented immigrants

It would be essentially impossible to bring together and expel 10 to 15 million people without establishing a massive and extremely expensive and extremely brutal police state. You should have massive raids, you should stop people everywhere in the street. I mean, this kind of application is exceptionally difficult, largely, because people do not come with their immigration status stamped on the front. And many people who have lived in this undocumented country have been here for decades, or certainly for many years. …

But what we really see is something quite different. … The objectives here seem to be political, not really aimed at applying immigration for undocumented migrants. It is for documentation. It is for people here who are students, people here with green cards. I would expect the next step to be people who have been naturalized citizens. In this sense, he also agrees with the decree which was designed to try to overthrow the subsidy of the 14th amendment of the citizenship of the right of birth. You would therefore see a formidable expansion of government power over bodies and minds and words and writings of several million people.

On the question of whether non-citizens have first amendments

It’s both yes and no. And the arrangement in question here dates back a long way to a long path and gives a specific authority to the Secretary of State with a very vague set of standards (if) the activities or actions or the speeches of non-citizens would have potentially serious consequences of foreign policy, then there is an even higher standard if they try to deport someone for things that would be protected under the Constitution if they are made by an American citizen. It was therefore not much invoked, precisely because the courts have never really clarified the exact relationship here. But insofar as there is a precedent for that, I think that the previous one is strong enough that the first amendment does not use the word “citizen”.

On protections for people with green cards

I receive people from people all the time to ask if they should leave the country. I do not think that we are at a time when I advise people to leave the country … But I certainly advise people to think hard before traveling, and that includes people with green cards, which is quite unique in my experience. … People who have green cards … have a lawful law status law, which, by the way, is a status that a person has completely the right to keep all their life, if they wish, or for any reason, it cannot naturalize and become an American citizen. This has been designed to be a stable and protected status, and it is extremely unusual for the government to start digging in the past of a person to find reasons to expel a person with a green card.

On the reasons for which a deportation error is difficult to repair

The system is put in place in such a way that if once an expelled person, it is extremely difficult to question it or challenge it. And that is why judges try to prevent what they think is unjustified deportations before they occur. This is what all these temporary orders and injunctions are used. The courts say that we must preserve competence. There is an entity called the Board of Immigration Appeals that for many years, once a person was expelled, they said this in a major case, “they exceeded our aid”. Now, for a human rights lawyer, it is a very difficult proposal to accept.

On the recurring debate of immigration, return to the country’s foundation

This debate is very old in this country. He returns to the founding generation. One of the laws that is used now by the Trump administration – again, I would say in a way that will ultimately be disputed, if not completely canceled by the courts – was something called the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act. And that came from an era when the government, in this case, was the administration of John Adams, was a lot afraid of the French revolutionaries and the Irish revolutionaries. …

But even at that time, Thomas Jefferson, who opposed this type of application, said and wrote that “the foreigner without a friend was selected as the safest subject of a first experience, but the citizen will soon follow”, or, in fact, has already followed because he used the so-called sedition law against citizens. And whenever we have seen these episodes, they tend to have a metastatic quality. They develop in a dangerous way because once you have left this type of government power to take root, it can be very difficult to uproot it.

Monique Nazareth and Thea Chaloner produced and published this interview for Broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper adapted it for the web.