US Rep. Jayapal grills Rubio for visa revocation of Turkish student

WASHINGTON

US congresswoman Pramila Jayapal confronted Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday and accused him of trampling on constitutional protections by revoking a Turkish graduate student’s visa after she co-authored an op-ed critical of Israel.

The heated exchange centered around Rumeysa Ozturk, a PhD student at Tufts University whose visa was revoked by the State Department in March. Jayapal, citing an internal State Department memo, noted the revocation came despite a lack of evidence that Ozturk posed a threat to US national security.

She said Ozturk's visa was revoked "apparently simply for co-authoring an Op-Ed," in the Tufts student newspaper, in which she urged the university to divest from Israel and recognize the “genocide” of Palestinians.

"Mr. Secretary, do you really think that Ms Ozturk’s Op-Ed results in a foreign policy consequence for the United States?" Jayapal asked.

"Where in the Constitution does it say that the secretary of state can override First Amendment protections of free speech?" she pressed.

Rubio defended his department’s actions. “There is no constitutional right to a student visa,” he said. “It is a privilege.”

“We deny visas every day all over the world,” Rubio said. “I will continue to revoke the visas of these people... They are guests.”

Jayapal noted that Ozturk was apprehended by masked, armed, plainclothes officers and taken to a detention facility in the state of Louisiana. She questioned why federal agents would need to hide their identities in a case involving a graduate student.

“If these are legitimate law enforcement agents carrying out proper arrests, why are they hiding their identities?” she asked.

Rubio said the anonymity was necessary to protect agents from “radical crazies,” but deflected questions about the operation to relevant agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Ozturk was snatched from the street in the northeastern state of Massachusetts by masked federal agents as part of the Trump administration’s controversial crackdown on pro-Palestinian students.

A federal judge in the US state of Vermont ordered her release on bail earlier this month, saying that the government has produced "no evidence" for her detention other than her writing an op-ed.