A disturbing video from the Trump era shows plainclothes officers surrounding and arresting Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, who was lawfully present on a student visa. The arrest occurred after she co-authored an op-ed urging the university to acknowledge what the authors called the "Palestinian genocide" and to divest from companies with ties to Israel. Despite the political nature of the speech, federal authorities detained Ozturk and sought her deportation. Judge William Sessions ordered her release on bail, stating there was no evidence of wrongdoing beyond the op-ed itself.

In a significant legal development, Noël Wise, a federal judge in California, issued a declaratory judgment striking down as unconstitutional the federal statutes used to target Ozturk and hundreds of other student visa holders based on protected speech. Judge Wise relied on findings from *American Association of University Professors v. Rubio*, where Judge William Young ruled that the administration was detaining and deporting noncitizens solely for political speech, calling such conduct "unconstitutional" and "virtually unknown to our constitutional tradition." The administration reportedly used research from the pro-Israel group Canary Mission to compile a list of roughly 5,000 individuals involved in Israel-related protests, forming a "Tiger Team" to review the list.

These actions have raised serious concerns about free speech and due process under the First Amendment.