The Washington Post reports:

Days before masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk to deport her, the State Department determined that the Trump administration had not produced any evidence showing that she engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization, as the government has alleged.

The finding, contained in a March memo that was described to The Washington Post, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have sufficient grounds for revoking Ozturk’s visa under an authority empowering the top U.S. diplomat to safeguard the foreign policy interests of the United States.

The memo, written by an office within the State Department, raises doubts about the public accusations made by the Trump administration as it has sought to justify Ozturk’s deportation. The Department of Homeland Security has said Ozturk engaged in activities “in support of Hamas,” a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, but neither that agency nor U.S. prosecutors have provided evidence for that claim.

The revocation of Ozturk’s visa is part of an expanding crackdown on international students and scholars by the Trump administration including hundreds of visa revocation cases. She was taken into custody March 25.

Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student from Turkey, was targeted by the government for co-writing an op-ed last year in the Tufts student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to the Israel-Gaza war. A hearing in Ozturk’s case is scheduled for Monday in federal court in Vermont. Her lawyers say her possible deportation would violate the United States’ founding principles of freedom of speech. [Continue reading…]