US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the Trump administration was searching daily for “these lunatics” after Washington arrested and revoked the visa of a Turkish student at Tufts University, and suggested that the State Department may have revoked over 300 visas.
Rubio’s remarks came in response to a query concerning Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student who was arrested by plainclothes and masked agents on Tuesday night in Somerville, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. The Trump administration’s most recent move against a foreign student who had expressed support for Palestinians in Israel’s conflict in Gaza was her arrest.
“At this time, it may be over 300. Every day, we do it. At a press appearance in Guyana, Rubio declared, “I take away their visas every time I locate one of these lunatics,” without specifying which individuals’ visas had been canceled.
Rubio told reporters on the plane returning to Washington that the 300 visas that were revoked were a mix of visiting and student permits. He claimed to have signed each and every action.
“We are searching daily for these crazy people who are causing chaos, but I hope we run out eventually because we have eliminated them all.”
When asked what particular acts Ozturk had taken that warranted the State Department’s decision to revoke his visa, the top US diplomat acknowledged the decision but did not elaborate.
According to Rubio, Washington would revoke any previously granted visas if students engaged in activities like “vandalizing colleges, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus.”
Rubio stated that the information submitted to him on Ozturk’s case satisfied the criterion of “those that are supportive of movements that go opposite to the foreign policy of the United States,” but he did not specify whether Ozturk had engaged in such activities.
Ozturk had entered the nation on an F-1 visa to study as a Fulbright Scholar in Tufts’ PhD program in Child Study and Human Development.
One year prior to her detention, Ozturk co-authored an opinion piece in the Tufts Daily, the student newspaper, criticizing the university’s response to student calls to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and withdraw from firms with ties to Israel.
Ozturk’s attorney filed a lawsuit after her arrest, claiming that her detention was illegal.
In a filing on Thursday, the US Department of Justice stated that Ozturk was now in Louisiana and had been detained outside of Massachusetts at the time the lawsuit was filed, despite a federal judge in Boston on Tuesday night ordering US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to refrain from removing her from Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice.
In a statement released late Wednesday, her attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, described the allegations against her client as “baseless” and pointed out that she had not been charged with any crimes.
Khanbabai stated, “It seems the only thing she is being persecuted for is her right to free expression.”
Supporters of Ozturk claim that her detention is the first known immigration arrest of a student involved in such activism in the Boston area. The Trump administration has detained or attempted to detain a number of foreign-born students who are lawfully in the US and have participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Critics have denounced the acts as an attack on free expression. The administration of Republican President Donald Trump contends that some protests can jeopardize US foreign policy and are antisemitic.
“Those we are expelling from our nation are not demonstrators; they are vandalizing. College campuses are being overtaken by them. Students are being harassed by them. “They are going beyond demonstration,” Rubio stated during a press appearance in Suriname later on Thursday.
“We desire their departure. We will expel each and every one of them that I come across.
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