'Terrible things are happening outside.'

March 25 fell during the last week of Ramadan this year. The group of friends who gathered at a diner in Somerville, Massachusetts that evening had not enjoyed so much as a glass of water since dawn. With sunset not coming until well after 7:00 PM, what they would eat and drink at the Iftar meal must have been a big part of their conversation.

But as the sun dropped below the buildings outside, one of their number was still missing. And as it grew dark, they became far more concerned about what had happened to Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk than anything waiting for them in the kitchen.

Her friends made an increasingly frantic search for Rumeysa, retracing part of the route she would have taken to reach the diner. They called hospitals, worried that her severe asthma might have flared.

Eventually, they contacted family lawyers. Those lawyers called ICE. After several fruitless conversations, ICE admitted that they had Rumeysa. But the only way we know what really happened was because someone's doorbell video captured the event.

ICE refused to say what they had done with Rumeysa.

The attorneys went to the court, securing an order that she not be taken out of state. They made sure ICE was aware of this order. ICE ignored the order, flying Rumeysa to a notorious "staging facility" in Alexandria, Louisiana.

When questioned about all this, Sec. of State Marco Rubio sneeringly declared that he had personally revoked Rumeysa's visa, along with those of 300 other students, and accused her of antisemitism and "tearing things up" on U.S. campuses. A statement from the Department of Homeland Security then claimed she had “engaged in activities in support" of the designated terrorist group Hamas.

Neither Rubio nor Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has provided any evidence of these claims.

According to Tufts, Rumeysa was not responsible for any violence or vandalism. The 30-year-old student worked at Tufts University’s Children’s Television Project, helped co-found an organization for children's media back in Turkey, and describes herself as someone who enjoys “reading picture books, hiking, baking (without recipes), and binge-watching cartoons and animations.”

Northeastern University psychologist Reyyan Bilge tweeted a statement that has been echoed by others who know her.

The single moment that appears to have doomed Rumeysa appears to be a 2024 op-ed in the Tufts student paper, co-written by Rumeysa and three other students, in which she encouraged the university to respect a series of resolutions passed by the university's student senate asking the board to withdraw investments in Israel.

These resolutions were the product of meaningful debate by the Senate and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law. Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.

Despite the carefully couched discussion of crimes and human rights violations, nothing in that editorial encourages violence. There is no mention of Hamas.

Most of the text is devoted to discussing how the university is obligated to listen to the voice of the students as expressed through the senate. In addition to the three co-authors, 32 other graduate students signed their endorsement of the op-ed.

But in the credits at the top of the article, Rumeysa's name was listed first. And that was all it took to find her targeted by a group known as Canary Mission which describes itself as documenting "individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond."

Rumeysa's profile on Canary Mission contains a single sentence describing her supposed crimes, saying that she "is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement." The rest of the page is a mixture of descriptions of acts committed by Hamas, and detailed descriptions of how to find Rumeysa.

It digs into both the university catalog and her LinkedIn page to list where she lives, where she works, and what she teaches right down to individual classes.

Canary Mission has bragged that it was this profile, mixing a single sentence about Rusmeysa co-authoring an editorial with paragraphs on activities by Hamas, that was responsible for her being accosted and abducted on her way to a quiet dinner with friends.

Rusmeysa was taken from her friends and families by men in black hoodies who covered their faces. She was moved from state to state—suffering an asthma attack in the process—in defiance of court orders. She has been accused of crimes with no evidence, stripped of her rights without notice, and imprisoned with no clue how long she will be held or where she will ultimately be taken.

All because her name was put on a blacklist by a group that is reveling in its power to destroy anyone, for any reason.

"Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared." — The Diary of Anne Frank

Rusmeysa Ozturk is just one person, but she's one of dozens, possibly hundreds, who have already been disappeared from their homes, families, and friends. This is also one of several instances in which Trump has demonstrated that he's willing to defy the courts and the law.

The Trump administration isn't testing the boundaries of the Constitution. They're done with that. They're not testing what the media will let them get away with. That's over. They're testing me, and you, and every other American. This is the point where you speak out ... or never speak again.

Rumeysa Ozturk's friend shared how to help Tufts student while she's detained. See how