Mass. lawmakers visit ICE detention facility in Louisiana, demand release of students

Members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation say two graduate students being held at immigration detention centers in Louisiana appear to be in decent health, but are afraid and unsure of their future. The lawmakers who visited them Tuesday expressed outrage that students are being held for voicing their political views, and accused the Trump administration of violating their constitutional rights.

Sen. Ed Markey and Reps. Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley said they were able to speak with Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts graduate student arrested by masked federal agents near her home in Somerville on March 25. They said they also visited Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia University who's been detained since last month and missed the birth of his son this week.

In a press conference after the meetings, Markey said immigration authorities are violating the students' rights to free speech and due process.

"When those constitutional protections are eroded, the protections of all of us are eroded," he said. "That is where we stand right now, at a turning point in American history."

In March, a senior Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said a federal investigation found Öztürk "engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization." But the DHS case against Öztürk in immigration court consists of a one-paragraph State Department memorandum that revoked her visa, citing her co-authorship of an op-ed in Tufts' student newspaper the government said had “found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.” The op-ed was in support of students urging Tufts to divest from Israel.

McGovern emphasized how antithetical to American values it is to detain people over speech: "We're not in El Salvador, we're not in Russia, we're not in China. We're the United States," he said. "And yet there are people who are incarcerated in detention centers, not because they committed any crime, but because of what they believe, what they've written."

"We're not in El Salvador, we're not in Russia, we're not in China. We're the United States."

Rep. Jim McGovern

The lawmakers said Öztürk and Khalil appear to be OK physically. But they and other prisoners reported being afraid, sad and unsure of the future.

Pressley said she was outraged that some women inside the Basile facility where Öztürk is being held wondered "if God has forgotten about them. If the world has forgotten about them."

She said lawmakers made the trip in order to demand answers and shine a light on what the Trump administration is doing to hundreds of foreign students.

Pressley described Öztürk's detainment by ICE as being "kidnapped," "disappeared, abducted from her life and her family, the community that she's known and the important work that she was doing at Tufts University as a PhD student. Why? For co-authoring an op-ed to affirm the humanity of all people."

Khalil was detained on March 8. He is a lawful permanent resident of the United States, of Palestinian heritage, who holds a green card and is married to an American citizen. He played a prominent role in the pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia University’s campus last year. He's now fighting the Trump administration's effort to deport him.

Pressley called the arrests shameful, and said, "We're here to tell this administration, who's operating with abuse of power, that it will not go unchecked."

And she warned, "It could be you tomorrow."

Following her arrest, Öztürk, a 30-year-old Turkish national, recounted in a court filing details of a harrowing trip with ICE agents, including a lack of food and medical care and fearing for her life, as officers transported her to a Vermont detention center cell overnight and then to Louisiana. She said when the men picked her up near Tufts and took away her phone, she had no idea who they were. For hours on a long drive north, she was shackled and feared she might be killed, she said in a sworn statement filed in federal court in Vermont. She was not permitted to call her lawyer.

Öztürk wrote that she suffers from asthma and had attacks on the trip to Louisiana, with access to her inhaler but not her medication.

A federal judge in Vermont has ordered immigration authorities to transfer Öztürk  back to Vermont, giving ICE a deadline of May 1 to comply. The judge also ordered a bail hearing for May 9, at which Öztürk is to appear in person.

The delegation was joined by House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-MI), and Rep. Troy Carter (D-LA). The lawmakers also met with Wendy Brito, an asylum-seeker from El Salvador and a New Orleans-area resident who did not return home last month from a regular check-in with ICE, according to Carter.

The Massachusetts delegation is scheduled to return to Boston Wednesday morning.