Trump is snuffing out the United States’ beacon to the world

It’s true a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump wanted to deport undocumented immigrants. And a lot is nearly 90%, according to exit polling.

But did voters want the United States to become a very different country to make deportations happen? Are we OK with being a nation that uses armed men to grab immigrants, legal and illegal, off the street and denies their right to due process under law, which is guaranteed to everyone, including immigrants.

Because that’s the country we’re living in now.

An appalling example of this is Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old Fulbright scholar working to earn her doctorate at Tufts University. She was here legally on a student visa.

In March, Ozturk was walking along a street in Somerville, Mass., when six plainclothes officers without visible badges confronted her, handcuffed her and whisked her away in an SUV. The whole thing was caught on a security camera.

When the men grabbed her, she shrieked. Reportedly she was on the phone with her mother at the time. Can you even imagine her mother’s terror? Soon, Ozturk was in a detention center in Louisiana.

Her crime? She was a co-author of a March 2024 op-ed in the student newspaper criticizing Tufts leaders for not taking a stronger stand against Isreal’s actions in Gaza and acknowledging “the Palestinian genocide.” The piece didn’t praise Hamas or call for any violent action.

The Department of Homeland Security claims she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” but has offered no evidence. Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered her deportation under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows removal of foreign nationals during a war. I guess we’re at war with our principles and values.

But before Rubio acted, a memo prepared by the state department argued there was no evidence Ozturk engaged in antisemitism or made public statements supporting Hamas And there were no sufficient reasons to revoke her visa.

Rubio says there’s more going on than the op-ed. He won’t elaborate.

Last week, a federal judge ordered her to be brought from Louisiana to Vermont where she can make her case in court for remaining in the U.S.

That’s what is supposed to happen. We can deport undocumented immigrants, a lot of them if you like, but the law requires they be allowed a date in court. Due process. It used to be super popular. So was freedom of speech.

That video could have come from any autocratic regime, past or present. Iran, China or Russia. Chile, Argentina or Germany. But this is the United States. College students in Iowa have had visas revoked, although we don’t know the details.

When the government decides it can make anyone disappear for made up reasons, none of us can depend on due process or legal safeguards to stop the madness. It’s difficult to find the words to convey how wrong, malicious and anti-American this is.

Whatever the perceived benefits are, they’re not worth selling the nation’s soul.

"Homegrown criminals next," Trump told Nayib Bukele, dictator of El Salvador, where our deported immigrants are being sent to prison. "I said homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places."

Trump’s just kidding around, right? He can’t be serious about sending American citizens to a death trap in El Salvador.

But once you roll over our laws, our Constitution and our courts, the brakes and guardrails are gone. The United States’ beacon to the world is being snuffed out. Fear will rule the darkness.

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com.