America's Harsh Treatment of Foreign Students Will Haunt It

The country risks losing its appeal among the world's best minds

- Patricia Lopez

The arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student grabbed off the streets of a Boston suburb by immigration agents last week, marks a new low in American Homeland Security's overzealous pursuit of ever-larger deportation numbers.

The video of Ozturk's arrest reveals a violation of basic civil rights and decency that should sicken every American and frighten legal immigrants to their core. The scene itself resembles one out of a small paramilitary country.

An unmarked vehicle pulls up, masked agents in plainclothes emerge and accost Ozturk, who utters a small scream. One agent wrests her cellphone out of her hand. With stunning swiftness, she is handcuffed and escorted away.

Ozturk, a former Fulbright scholar, has been charged with no crime so far, according to her lawyer. Her only infraction appears to be a fairly mild op-ed piece she co-wrote with several other students for the Tufts Daily, in which they urged the university to take seriously a student government resolution calling on the school to divest from companies dealing with Israel and recognize the genocide of Palestinians.

In other words, a classic non-violent exercise of free speech.

Tufts President Sunil Kumar said in a statement that Ozturk's student visa status had been terminated "and we seek to confirm whether that information is true."