Marco Rubio's mission to root out students "making a ruckus" causes collateral damage

[marmar]

Marco Rubio’s mission to root out students “making a ruckus” causes collateral damage
Seizure of Tufts University student shows the First Amendment is the first casualty

By Austin Sarat
Published March 31, 2025 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) Until March 25, 2025, Rumeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student from Turkey, might have assumed that when she wrote an op-ed in the school’s newspaper critical of her school's failure to stand up for the human rights of Palestinians, she was doing what people in the United States were free to do. Indeed, all who live in the U.S. might have thought the same thing, even if we disagree with the views she expressed in her piece.

Those assumptions were well grounded. The Washington Post notes, “The First Amendment protects the right to speak, protest and publish views, regardless of citizenship status.“ It quotes a 1953 Supreme Court decision that said: “’Once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country, he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders.’”

....(snip)....

She was seized and taken into custody because "DHS and ICE investigations found Öztürk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans."

No one has said what those activities were. But Öztürk has never been charged with a crime or with violating the rules or policies of Tufts University.

....(snip)....

The First Amendment protects speech even if it creates a commotion, disturbance, stir, or fuss and is troublesome, offensive, or even hateful. Only if it falls into specific, narrowly defined categories of unprotected speech, like incitement to violence or true threats, can speech be prohibited or punished. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/31/marco-rubios-mission-to-root-out-students-making-a-ruckus-causes-collateral-damage/

[yardwork]

1. This is so horrible. Everything our country is built on, being destroyed.

People who call themselves "conservatives" should be the most upset but they're the ones enabling it.