Gaza First Amendment Alert

Sec. Rubio Seeks to Deport Tufts Grad over Op-ed; Khalil's Habeas Petition Set to Proceed in NJ; 'Catch and Revoke' Deportations Escalate; College Admins Continue to Appease Assault on Higher Ed.

Marco Rubio Seeks to Deport Tufts Graduate Student for Writing An Op-ed

On March 25, plainclothes DHS officers seized Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, forcing her into a van. Ozturk is a Turkish national in the US on a student visa. At Tufts, Öztürk was one of four co-authors of an op-ed in the student newspaper calling upon the administration to respond to student senate resolutions calling for divestment from Israel.

Secretary of State Rubio has evoked a Cold War immigration provision that allows the Secretary of State to unilaterally revoke the immigration status of someone whose presence in the US poses adverse consequences for US foreign policy. Öztürk’s co-authorship of the op-ed appears to be the basis of the attempt to remove her.

Mahmoud Khalil Habeas Petition Set to Proceed in New Jersey

Two federal judges have ruled that the correct venue to hear a habeas corpus petition brought on behalf of Mahmoud Khalil is the Federal District Court of New Jersey. As previously reported in the Gaza First Amendment Alert, Khalil was arrested in New York on March 8, 2025. After being briefly held in New Jersey, Khalil was quickly whisked away to Louisiana where he was told he had a removal proceeding scheduled in immigration court for April 8, 2025. Like Öztürk, Khalil is not accused of a crime, but is being targeted for his political speech under the Cold War-era clause that allows the Secretary of State to remove someone based on nebulous foreign policy considerations. Upon learning of his arrest, lawyers for Khalil filed a federal habeas court in the Southern District of New York, where Khalil was arrested.

Immigration courts are not what are known as “Article III,” the co-equal judicial branch established by Article III of the US Constitution. Instead, they are administrative bodies within the Department of Justice, part of the executive branch. Habeas corpus petitions are a form of relief where a detained individual challenges the validity of their confinement in federal court. Using the habeas petition, Khalil’s lawyers are challenging the validity of his detention on the basis that the proceedings are retaliation against his pro-Palestine speech. While the removal proceeding would take place in the administrative immigration court, the habeas petition is heard by an Article III judge.

A federal judge in New York rejected the government’s request to transfer the hearings on the habeas petition out of New York to Louisiana, where the government is holding Khalil. The judge did find Khalil was detained in New Jersey at the time the petition was filed, so Khalil’s case was transferred to New Jersey. Once in New Jersey, the government again challenged jurisdiction, arguing Khalil’s habeas petition should be transferred to Louisiana. And once again the government lost.The government is now challenging the federal judiciary’s ability to hear Khalil’s First Amendment claims at this juncture in the removal process, as well as arguing that the Secretary of State’s determination that Khalil’s presence poses adverse consequences for U.S. foreign policy is an unreviewable political question.

‘Catch and Revoke’ Deportations Escalate

Khalil and Öztürk are not the only students caught in the crosshairs of the Trump-Rubio crackdown. Rubio has personally estimated that he has signed 300 letters revoking visas of students and other visitors to the United States. It is unclear how many of these revocations are based on political speech versus other factors, such as commission of crime. However, these revocations appear to be part of Rubio’s “Catch and Revoke” initiative. Catch and Revoke uses artificial intelligence to surveil social media for content from visa holders deemed supporting or sympathetic to Hamas and other State Department designated foreign terrorist organizations. As the Rubio and the Trump Administration’s anti-Palestinian, anti-free speech backers view any criticism of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza or support for the Palestinian people as support for Hamas, this is clearly part of a broad political purge.

In addition to the use of AI social media surveillance, the Trump-Rubio crackdown has clearly been facilitated by a network of private vigilantes. As previously reported in the Gaza First Amendment Alert, the far-right Zionist organization Betar has publicly boasted of its role in agitating for the deportation of specific students. The group has attempted to claim credit for Khalil’s deportation. Öztürk was also targeted by the Canary Mission, an anti-Palestinian blacklisting effort. Defending Rights & Dissent is working to expose the role private McCarthyites have played in this weaponization and has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the State Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI, and Department of Justice. We will likely have to sue to compel compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. If you are interested in exposing the truth about these groups’ role in the targeting of Pro-Palestine students, please consider donating to support our efforts.

College Administrators Continue to Appease Assault on Higher Education

As the Trump administration has elevated the cause of anti-Palestinian advocates to destroy free speech on America’s college campuses, college administrators have largely appeased them. New York University cancelled the lecture of Doctors Without Borders former international head Dr. Joanne Liu. The lecture, which was scheduled over a year ago, was on “Challenges in Humanitarian Crises.” New York University administrators became upset that her slideshow included a slide on the casualties of aid workers in conflict zones that included reference to the number of aid workers killed in Gaza. An administrator told her this slide could be considered “antisemitic.” Mentions of US cuts to USAID also raised concerns as they could be considered “anti-governmental.”

At Harvard University, two heads of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Cemal Kafadar and Rosie Bsheer, have stepped down. According to anonymous faculty members, the two professors were forced out as part of an effort to appease the Trump administration.

Yale Law School has fired Helyeh Doutaghi, the deputy director of the Law and Political Economy Project. Doutaghi was accused of being a member of Samidoun, the Palestinian prisoner support network sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Asset Control last year. According to Yale, Doutaghi refused to cooperate with their investigation. Doutaghi vehemently rejects that characterization.

The UC Davis School of Law responded to its student government’s passage of a resolution calling for a “Boycott of Businesses Connected to Israel and Complicit in Ongoing Genocide and Occupation in Palestine” by suspending the student government. According to the school, the Law Students Association by passing the resolution “knowingly violated University of California policy by seeking to implement a discriminatory resolution intended to boycott people or entities with ties to Israel.” As a result of the suspension, school administrators will now take control of the Law Student Assocation’s $40,000 budget.

Israel Continues using US Weapons to Kill Palestinian Journalists in Gaza

On Monday, March 24, 2025, Israel killed two journalists in separate attacks in Gaza. Hossam Shabat, a beloved reporter for Al Jazeera, was targeted by an Israeli airstrike in his car in Beit Lahia, in the north, and Mohammad Mansour, with Palestine Today, was killed when the IDF bombed his home in Khan Younis, in the south. In a gruesome tweet, Israel boasted they had “eliminated” Shabat.

Israel had previously named Shabat in a disturbing social media post accusing six Al Jazeera journalists of being members of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad. The post offered no evidence and Israel’s claims have been roundly rejected. At the time, we at Defending Rights & Dissent warned:

These evidence free accusations are designed to facilitate further assassinations of Palestinian journalists.

Israel has repeatedly targeted Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

We demand the State Department stop sending Israel the arms it kills journalists with.

DropSite has profiled how those surviving journalists on Israel’s hitlist have continued working to tell the world the truth about Gaza in spite of the threat on their lives.

On Tuesday, April 1, 2025, Palestinian journalist Mohammed Saleh al-Bardawil was killed along with his wife and three children when Israel struck their home.