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Welcome to The Logoff. Patrick Reis is off right this moment: Rümeysa Öztürk was detained by the Trump administration, seemingly only for writing an op-ed. Now, in a scorching new ruling, a federal decide ordered her freed.
What’s the background? Öztürk — a Tufts College PhD pupil and a Turkish nationwide — was whisked off the streets of Massachusetts by ICE brokers in late March. Her arrest was a part of the Trump administration effort to revoke visas from college students who protested Israel’s struggle in Gaza.
Her detention stood out as significantly surprising as a result of there was no indication she had ever engaged in any disruptive or lawbreaking protests. She had merely co-authored an op-ed in Tufts’ pupil newspaper final 12 months that criticized the struggle and urged college directors to acknowledge college students’ issues about it.
A Trump administration spokesperson anonymously claimed in March that “DHS and ICE investigations discovered Öztürk engaged in actions in assist of Hamas.” However to at the present time they’ve conspicuously failed to provide any proof of that — together with, when Öztürk filed swimsuit, earlier than a decide.
What did the decide say? Choose William Classes III ordered Öztürk launched “instantly.” Ruling from the bench, he sounded appalled by the Trump administration’s conduct, which he mentioned “chills the speech of the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people who find themselves not residents.”
He mentioned Öztürk had made “very substantial claims of First Modification and due course of violations,” and that, moreover, the federal government had supplied “no proof” about their motivation for detaining her apart from the op-ed.
Is that this case over, then? No. Öztürk was ordered launched from detention. However the query of whether or not the US authorities can legally revoke her visa stays unresolved. Whereas Classes sounds very more likely to rule in her favor, it’s unclear if conservatives on the Supreme Court docket will do the identical, ought to the case attain them. Nonetheless, this case has been a humiliation to the Trump administration, and maybe there’s a faint glimmer of hope they’ll determine to simply drop it. Too optimistic? In all probability.
And with that, it’s time to log out…
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