April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), issued the following statement after a graduate student at Tufts University was detained by federal immigration authorities Tuesday evening:

WASHINGTON, DC – “Rumeysa Ozturk, graduate student at Tufts University and an SEIU Local 509 member, was snatched by masked federal immigration authorities on Tuesday night on her way to Ramadan services. Her arrest, with no charges filed, is yet another chilling example of this administration’s efforts to use immigration actions to target and silence people merely for criticizing U.S. policy in the Middle East. Ozturk, from Turkey, had a valid student visa, and her lawyer has no idea where she has been taken or why, though she had recently co-authored an op-ed in the student newspaper in support of the people of Palestine.

This is about the freedom we all have to speak our minds without fear of government attacks. The First Amendment is being burned before our very eyes by an administration that has shown that it is willing to do whatever it takes to carry out its extremist agenda. In recent weeks, the administration has threatened university funding and arrested foreign graduate students with little or no explanation. We will not forget Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student activist from Columbia University, Badar Khan Suri, a professor and postdoctoral scholar on religion and peace studies from Georgetown University, Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor of medicine and kidney transplant specialist from Brown University, and others whose names we don’t yet know.

America’s role as a beacon of freedom and human rights is being extinguished, and our leading universities are rapidly becoming graveyards for free speech rights, with students and faculty living in fear. As a union representing workers across higher education, including faculty, graduate workers and administrative staff, we call upon university officials, elected leaders and the courts to stand together to defend the rights of students and faculty. We demand that this administration respect due process, transparency, free speech, and basic decency when it wields its vast immigration powers.”

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