Workers World calls on all students who have citizen rights in the United States and who identify with the right to protest to take actions to defend any students that have been targeted by the Trump administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cops. WW calls on the anti-imperialist movement to join and support any of these efforts.
Look at the following three examples already underway to defend students — in the courts and in the streets — who courageously demonstrated their opposition to the U.S.-Israeli-inflicted genocide in Gaza.
Rümeysa Öztürk is a doctoral student and Fullbright scholar of Turkish citizenship at Tufts University in suburban Boston. She was seized by masked, plainclothes ICE agents who assaulted and zip-tied her while she was walking in her Somerville, Massachusetts, neighborhood March 25. The Gestapo-like assault was caught on video and seen by millions of people worldwide.
Outraged by the assault, thousands of people converged on Tufts University on March 26 to demand that ICE immediately release Öztürk from her rendition to an ICE concentration camp in Louisiana. Two of Boston’s largest unions — Service Employees (SEIU), of which Öztürk is a member, and the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) — have demanded Öztürk’s immediate release and an end to the ICE raids. A federal judge ruled on March 28 that Öztürk cannot be deported without a court order.
Thousands gathered in Powderhouse Square near Tufts University to demand “Free Rümeysa Öztürk!,” Somerville, Massachusetts, March 26, 2025. (Photo credit Facebook: Cathy McLaughlin)
Yunseo Chung, a Columbia student and lawful U.S. resident who moved to the United States from South Korea as a child, was arrested at a sit-in March 5 at nearby Barnard College protesting the expulsion of students who participated in pro-Palestinian activism.
Threatened with deportation by Homeland Security, on March 24 Chung sued Trump and other administration members. Her lawsuit argues that the government is “attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike.” (Guardian, March 25) A U.S. district judge granted a temporary restraining order that prohibits moving Chung, who had not been seized yet, outside the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York.
Mahmoud Khalil, who ICE seized at his Columbia University housing, drew broad publicity and sparked demonstrations of thousands of people in the New York area and all over the country. Like Öztürk, Khalil was moved to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, where the MAGA regime expects a blank check for its police-state tactics.
Hundreds of mostly Jewish demonstrators held a sit-in at Trump Tower in New York March 13 to protest Khalil’s and others’ seizures. Police arrested some 100 participants. A protest March 28 at the Newark, New Jersey, site of Khalil’s court hearing backed up the demands by his attorneys that the hearings stay in New Jersey.
Hundreds of protesters outside the federal court hearing for Maumoud Khalil in Newark, N.J., on March 28, 2025. (Photo: Ceasefire Now N.J.)
Other students have been seized, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the administration is arbitrarily canceling green cards (permission to work in the U.S.) and student visas for others, including Chinese students.
The Gestapo-like arrests aim to frighten and silence opposition. They have also awakened and spread resistance. The opposition includes those who fight against the U.S.-Israeli genocidal war in Gaza and others who support the right to dissent.
WW urges its readers and co-thinkers to promote all such signs of resistance to the White House’s police-state tactics.
Rubio’s public threat that the imperialist state will arbitrarily remove rights of foreign students, visitors and others, while a serious threat to the individuals targeted, exposes weaknesses at the heart of U.S. imperialism.
For decades the U.S. ruling class opened its universities’ doors to students worldwide with utter confidence this step would profit their system. They had no fear of consequences. On the contrary, many students would remain in the U.S. and provide loyal researchers, doctors and engineers to the U.S. capitalist economy.
That the MAGA crew is closing these doors is an admission that U.S. imperialism is losing its ability to attract this talent and win students’ loyalty.
Defend the students!