Conor:
Today, I want to focus on issues that concern us as students, particularly our international peers. The Trump administration is enacting a new executive order concerning these students, and I believe this raises several important questions.
Our first glimpse of this new order came with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil. This case has been nagging at me for some time now. It’s complicated, and there are valid points on both sides. To better evaluate what our principles should be, we should compare it to another case. The case of Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts PhD student, hits close to home and makes for a good comparison.
The key distinction between these two cases, in my eyes, is the nature of their alleged infractions. Khalil was a lead negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Hamas student organization at Columbia University. The government alleges that he not only celebrated the October 7 massacre but also provided material support to Hamas—a designated terrorist organization and self-proclaimed enemy of the United States—by distributing literature that promoted the group and acting as one of its operatives. Several civil lawsuits make similar allegations.
Öztürk’s infraction, however, is less clear. It is apparently an op-ed she co-wrote in The Tufts Daily, in which she urges the University president to engage with the student government on recently passed amendments condemning Israel for its role in the conflict in Gaza and calling for Tufts to divest from companies linked to Israel.
The government’s defenders argue that neither of these students—nor any other foreign students—are American citizens. As such, they say, they are considered guests, and their residence here is a privilege, not a right. That privilege, they contend, comes with conditions—chief among them, not undermining American national security interests.
On the other hand, the student’s defenders argue that freedom of speech must be protected. Even if Khalil and Öztürk are not American citizens, can we truly claim to have the greatest universities in the world—often recognized as beacons in the search for truth—if all students are not free to express their opinions? People across the globe recognize the superiority of American higher education, largely because students are free to express their views and engage in dialogue. Without that freedom, we risk losing our superiority to other countries.
I believe that there are valid points on both sides. The government is right in asserting that residence here is a privilege, and we are not obligated to welcome those who are hostile to our country. But I question whether these cases meet that standard.
Khalil’s case seems to. He not only helped lead a group who celebrated October 7 and Hamas, but he allegedly provided material support to Hamas. While speech is protected, actively advocating for and celebrating terrorism is not.
Öztürk’s case, on the other hand, appears to be a miscarriage of justice—a gross one at that. She accuses a U.S. ally, Israel, of genocide, but nowhere does she support armed resistence against Israel, much less mention Hamas. The government appears to be persecuting her solely for saying something it did not like.
If that doesn’t sound Orwellian enough, watch the video of her arrest. It’s revolting. Grabbing a young woman in a back alley while masked and unidentified? Congratulations, you’ve become the KGB.
Ultimately, the point I want to make is that we must be careful with how we treat our guests. We must respect their human dignity, regardless of their citizenship. If they mean to do us harm, then we have every right to—and should—politely facilitate their removal from our country. But we cannot flinch at every word we don’t agree with. If we act out of fear, the world will know, and they will see us as weak. We are a great nation when we uphold the ideals of America, but when we ignore the difference between enemy and critic, we are no better than a gang of thugs.
Isabella:
How do you determine whether someone belongs to a gang of thugs?
Conor brings up interesting questions surrounding the safety of foreign students and government critics, but immigrants from all walks of life are living in fear that they will be designated as criminals and forcibly removed from the United States without due process.
On March 14, President Trump signed a proclamation declaring that his administration would invoke the Alien Enemies Act to detain and remove U.S. immigrants who are from countries considered enemies of the state. More specifically, Trump claimed that the Venezuelan-based gang Tren de Aragua (TdA), “is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” that it has “unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions.” The White House statement also alleges that “[Nicolás] Maduro leads the regime-sponsored enterprise Cártel de los Soles, which coordinates with and relies on TdA,” to traffic illegal narcotics in the U.S. and engage in “mass illegal immigration.”
Notably, the Alien Enemies Act, a law from 1798, has only been used three other times—always during wartime. It was used during the War of 1812, World War I, and, most infamously, during World War II to intern Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants. We are not currently involved in a conflict of that scale, which requires Congress to declare a state of war. The president, however, can invoke the law unilaterally in response to an “invasion” or “predatory incursion.”
What do I make of this?
TdA is a transnational criminal organization born in Venezuela’s Tocorón prison, where its leaders ordered extortion, kidnappings, and murders from behind bars, before eventually spreading to Colombia, Peru, Chile, and the United States—just a few of the countries now housing the approximately 8 million Venezuelans who have fled Maduro’s oppressive regime.
Anyone in the United States who belongs to TdA—and, more broadly to MS-13 and other established gangs—should be properly identified, detained, questioned, and tried for their crimes and involvement. That’s not up for debate. But invoking the Alien Enemies Act allows government officials to circumvent due process, eliminate hearings in immigration court, and send people essentially wherever they want. At least one innocent person has already been caught in this huge, desolate, indiscriminate net whose main basis for proving allegations of gang membership appears to be as flimsy as … tattoos.
The White House created a document called the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide,” which uses a point system to “reasonably” suspect immigrants who score six points are gang members. According to this guide, tattoos alone are worth four points under the symbolism category.
According to Venezuelan journalist Ronna Rísquez, “Tren de Aragua does not use any tattoos as a form of gang identification; no Venezuelan gang does,” and yet officials are citing vague gestures and tattoos of crowns, stars, and even the Michael Jordan Jumpman logo, as grounds for suspicion.
These immigrants are then deported—regardless of their immigration status, despite previous government-issued protections, and without regular procedure. They are not necessarily sent home, but to locations like the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, notorious for torture and brutality.
TdA members who have committed horrible, inhuman crimes probably don’t deserve better than those conditions. But if innocent people—without any criminal history in their home country or in the U.S.—are being abandoned by the judicial system and relegated to abuse and soul-sucking living conditions, then we are really thugs too. It is the duty of the American government to rise above and afford immigrants the same rights afforded to everyone else living in America.
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