Big Media Aren't Reporting What the Law Says About Snatching Foreign Students

Rubio says the law lets him deport U.S. critics, but corporate media aren't reporting on the whole of the law

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a March 27, 2025, news conference defended detaining a lawful U.S. resident for writing an op-ed article. (Screengrab / C-SPAN video.)

The Trump administration has until Tuesday to respond to the legal challenge against the detention of a grad student snatched off the street by masked federal officers last week. But Pres. Donald Trump’s detainment policies are on shakier legal ground than you might think based on corporate media coverage.

A judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration not to deport Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts graduate student in child studies, back to Turkey while the lawsuit proceeds. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday defended Ozturk’s arrest, transfer, and detention at a news conference.

His remarks were, in effect, an admission of criminal wrongdoing by the Trump administration. It was a confession that virtually no major media outlets have reported. Here’s the full exchange from Rubio’s news conference on Thursday:

Humeyra Pamuk (Reuters): Mr. Secretary, a Turkish student in Boston was detained and handcuffed on the street by plainclothes agents. A year ago she wrote an opinion piece about the Gaza war. Could you help us understand what, the specific action she took led to her visa being revoked? And what was your State Department’s role in that process?

Rubio: We revoked her visa. It’s an F1 visa, I believe. We revoked it, and here’s why — and I’ll say it again; I’ve said it everywhere. Let me be abundantly clear, okay. If you go apply for a visa right now anywhere in the world — let me just send this message out — if you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student and you tell us that the reason why you’re coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa. If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa.

Now, once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States, and we have a right, like every country in the world has a right, to remove you from our country. So it’s just that simple.

I think it’s crazy, I think it’s stupid for any country in the world to welcome people into their country that are going to go to their universities as visitors — they’re visitors — and say I’m going to your universities to start a riot, I’m going to your universities to take over a library and harass people. I don’t care what movement you’re involved in. Why would any country in the world allow people to come and disrupt? We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses. And if we’ve given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away.

I encourage every country to do that, by the way, because I think it’s crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it. We’re just not going to have it. So we’ll revoke your visa; and once your visa is revoked, you’re illegally in the country and you have to leave. Every country in the world has a right to decide who comes in as a visitor and who doesn’t.

If you invite me into your home because you say, “I want to come to your house for dinner,” and I go to your house and I start putting mud on your couch and spray-painting your kitchen, I bet you you’re going to kick me out. Well, we’re going to do the same thing if you come into the United States as a visitor and create a ruckus for us. We don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country, but you’re not going to do it in our country.

Pamuk: A follow-up?

Rubio: Sure. Just tell me your follow-up and I’ll tell every – and depending on your question, I’ll answer it or not…

Pamuk: Could you confirm – there’s new reporting that 300 visas – State Department has revoked 300 (inaudible).

Rubio: Maybe more. It might be more than 300 at this point. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.

Pamuk: It could – you’re saying it could be more than 300 visas?

Rubio: Sure. I hope – I mean, at some point I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them. But we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.

Rubio’s apologia for the administration’s actions is, of course, stunning on a number of levels. It’s sloppy: “Participat[ing] in movements that are involved in doing things” could apply to everything and isn’t a serious criteria for anything.

It’s also an official repudiation of the rights to free expression that the administration cherishes as rationales for platforming hate speech and incitements to violence.

But also, Ozturk isn’t accused of disrupting Tufts’ campus. She contributed an opinion piece to a student organization, The Tufts Daily, in support of a resolution by another student organization, the senate.

Rubio never even suggests that Ozturk meets the legal criteria for deportation: That her presence or actions could impact U.S. foreign policy goals.

As for vandalism, harassment, and taking over buildings, the administration actually does “care what movement you’re involved in,” in Rubio’s phrasing. You can do all of those things if you’re MAGA.

Trump not only pardoned but is considering reparations for people criminally convicted of vandalizing the Capitol, harassing the police defending it, and taking over the building that is America’s legislative heart. Ozturk has not been convicted, charged, or even publicly accused of anything remotely like any of those criminal MAGA activities.

There’s no indication that Ozturk committed any crime whatsoever. She has not been charged with any crime. The only known activity that Rubio cited was Ozturk’s co-authored opinion piece in The Tufts Daily (which, full disclosure, I served as editor in chief many years ago).

The administration has cited federal law on deportations to justify Ozturk’s capture. The relevant statute reads:

8 USC §1227(a)(4)(c) An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.

Applying this to Ozturk is ridiculous on its face. We know Ozturk’s presence and activities would not have such consequences, because her only known activity was a year ago and didn’t have serious consequences for the Tufts administration, let alone the Trump administration.

More to the point, the very next line in the statute makes clear that people exactly like Ozturk are not deportable.

It says that exemptions to the law can be found in clauses (ii) and (iii) of section 1182(a)(3)(C). Clause (ii) applies to foreign officials, which Ozturk is not. But clause (iii) applies to people who aren’t foreign officials. And it says that aliens shall not be excludable or even subject to restrictions on entry…

…because of the alien's past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States, unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien's admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.

When I did a search to see if legacy media had cited this statute, I couldn’t find a one. What did turn up was the ACLU’s lawsuit defending Ozturk, explaining that the same statute:

...expressly prohibits the Secretary of State from excluding or conditioning entry based on a noncitizen’s “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States”...

The Supreme Court has ruled on this, too, as The Independent’s John Bowden noted. Bowden quotes the 1945 ruling in Bridges v Wixon that blocked the U.S. from deporting a lawful permanent resident over alleged ties to the Communist Party:

“Once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders. Such rights include those protected by the First and Fifth Amendments and by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

And the ACLU suit explains that it’s not enough for Rubio to decide, personally, that Ozturk could somehow compromise national interests. Rubio has to personally certify that determination to Congress.

Why haven’t corporate media reported on what U.S. law actually says about the administration’s legal deportation powers? I’ve written about this before, but in short, most of this kind of coverage is done under the rubric of political reporting. The capricious silos of corporate journalism render it a political story, not a legal story.

This has dangerous implications. Public awareness of relevant law would make it politically much more hazardous for Rubio, politicians, and even judges to flout or ignore the statutory clauses that constrain them.

And the law clearly says that in the absence of Rubio’s certifications to Congress, Ozturk — and 300+ other students — can only lose their visas on the grounds that they’ve done something American citizens don’t have the legal right to do.

The administration could, in theory, have evidence of her material assistance to Hamas. But they haven’t cited any.

The other, profoundly disturbing, possibility is that the administration believes that detaining Ozturk was lawful because she didn’t have the right to express her opinion. Which, under the law, would mean that none of us do.

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I’m a veteran journalist and TV news producer who’s worked at MSNBC, CNN, ABCNews, The Daily Show, Air America Radio, and TYT. You can support my reporting with a donation or paid subscription. Thank you.