‘Morning Joe’ Slams Trump Administration’s ‘Disturbing’ ICE Arrest of Turkish Tufts Student | Video

"What [Trump] is trying to do is put America on a war footing," warns Sen. Chris Murphy The post ‘Morning Joe’ Slams Trump Administration’s ‘Disturbing’ ICE Arrest of Turkish Tufts Student | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Mar 27, 2025 - 19:40

‘Morning Joe’ Slams Trump Administration’s ‘Disturbing’ ICE Arrest of Turkish Tufts Student | Video

“Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski turned her attention Thursday morning to the ICE arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish woman attending Tufts University with a valid student visa, who was taken into custody by federal authorities on Tuesday. The arrest comes as more and more scrutiny is being directed at President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 last week, a wartime law that the president’s administration has so far used to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants with purported ties to a notorious gang to a prison in El Salvador.

Questions have rained down about the legality of Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, as well as whether or not he even signed his official invocation of it. The act has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge, and an appeals court denied the Trump administration’s attempt to appeal that block on Wednesday. Ozturk was nonetheless apprehended on the street Tuesday by government agents for allegedly engaging in activities in support of Hamas.

“Her lawyer says the Department of Homeland Security agents apprehended her on Tuesday in Somerville, Massachusetts, as she was on her way to break her Ramadan fast with friends,” Brzezinski said over a recording of Ozturk’s street arrest. “Just watching this video is incredibly disturbing.” As of this writing, no criminal charges have been filed against Ozturk, who is currently being held in a detention center in Louisiana.

“This should matter to every single American,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told Brzezinski when asked what can be done about Ozturk’s arrest. “The president does not need the Alien Enemies Act in order to remove from this country people who pose a threat to the nation, people who have engaged in criminal behavior or who have coordinated with terrorist groups. He has that power under existing law.”

“What [Trump] is trying to do is put America on a war footing,” Murphy continued. “[The Alien Enemies Act] is a wartime authority, and what you really [should] worry about is the president continuing to move forward in exercising wartime powers in order to suspend additional elements of the constitution.” The senator warned that the arrest of Ozturk is one element in a concerning trend.

“You are watching along multiple channels this massive slide away from democracy and democratic norms,” Murphy explained. “That video [of Ozturk’s arrest] is chilling because the president does not need that act to be able to remove a threat, but it speaks to his willingness to try to put America in a kind of quasi-martial law that ultimately will come to be a threat not just to green card holders but to American citizens as well.”

“So far, [Ozturk] has not been charged with anything,” “Morning Joe” panelist Willie Geist noted. “What we know is she wrote an op-ed with a couple of other graduate students a year ago in Tufts’ student newspaper [that was] very critical of the university’s handling of the [pro-Palestinian] protests on campus, suggesting that Israel was engaged in genocide, saying that the school should divest from all Israeli companies — a lot of that stuff that we heard on campuses a year ago.”

He added, “You don’t have to agree with what she believes or writes or says, but to snatch her off the street for that, unless there’s something else we don’t know, is outrageous.” Ozturk’s arrest comes the same month that the Trump administration arrested legal U.S. resident Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student of Palestinian descent who helped organize and lead pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia’s campus last spring.

You can watch the full “Morning Joe” segment on Ozturk’s arrest yourself in the video above.

The post ‘Morning Joe’ Slams Trump Administration’s ‘Disturbing’ ICE Arrest of Turkish Tufts Student | Video appeared first on TheWrap.