Members of Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation have returned from a visit to an ICE detention center in Louisiana to demand the release of students Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil. The two face deportation after speaking out against U.S. support for Israel’s bloody military campaign in Gaza. Last month, Öztürk, a Tufts student from Turkey, was apprehended by ICE agents from her home in Somerville. Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University, was picked up in New York City. Civil libertarians say the arrests lack legal standing as the Trump administration moves to crack down on immigrants and critics. Senator Ed Markey and Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern, all Democrats, made the trip to both protest the students’ treatment and inspect the facilities they’re being held in. WAMC spoke with McGovern Wednesday:
MCGOVERN: Well, we're outraged over the fact that people have been arrested and put in detention centers who have been charged with nothing, who have committed no crime. The only issue that they're being questioned about is the fact that they have publicly discussed views that are contrary to that of Donald Trump when it comes to the Middle East, but this kind of detention is not supposed to happen in the United States. And if they can apprehend immigrants like Rümeysa Öztürk or Mahmoud Khalil and put them in a detention center just because they disagree with their views, then what's to say they can't go after American citizens? So, we went to go down and check on their wellbeing and to see the conditions of the detention center and to let them know that there are people who are pushing for their release.
WAMC: Now, tell us about what you saw in Louisiana. How are the detainees? What are their conditions? What did you hear from them?
Well, we talked to a lot of detainees, not just those two, but I mean, they were telling us, for example, that in anticipation of our visit, the for-profit company that runs the detention center actually did a little bit of painting and fixed leaky faucets and fixed broken toilets and cleaned up the grounds so that we would see something very different than what happens there every single day. But we heard a lot of concern from the people who are being detained there, that the temperatures, they have the air conditioning down so low and they're not giving enough blankets, that lights are on 24 hours a day, so it’s hard for them to sleep, that the food is awful, that there's all kinds of deficiencies that exist there. So, the conditions are like a prison, and in some cases worse than a prison. But again, our major focus for going there was the fact that people are being sent there without being charged with anything. And again, that that happens in China, that happens in Russia, that happens in El Salvador, but it doesn't happen in the United States. It's not supposed to happen in the United States.
This has been considered by many yet another canary in the coal mine, so to speak, of America's descent into authoritarianism during the second Trump administration- And that's certainly dialogue and rhetoric we've heard from your party. At this point, given the severity of those concerns, what is the Democrats’ strategy moving forward to successfully oppose the Trump administration as it continues to undertake these extreme measures against its critics?
Well, Senator Markey and Congresswoman Pressley and I were the first congressional delegation to get access to Rümeysa and to Mahmoud, so the House of Representatives and the Senate will now conduct oversight hearings. So essentially, we're doing the oversight hearings for them. We're letting people know what's going on, we're calling attention to it. We're also working with their lawyers to figure out ways that we can be helpful in their legal strategy. Again, they've been charged with nothing. They've been denied due process. Again, this is not supposed to happen in the United States. We're also looking at a legislative strategy to clarify what our policy should be when it comes to putting people in detention centers and to make clear that arresting people and or apprehending people and disappearing them just because you don't like what they've written or because you don't like what they've said, again, that's un-American, and that's unacceptable.
You guys headed down to Louisiana at least partially because of these higher profile detentions. We've also seen many salt of the earth, working class people in Western Mass who have also been detained and have also been shuttled around detention centers across the US, and there's been a lot of silence from Democrats in Massachusetts about those below the fold detentions, shall we say. Do you feel like your party is doing enough in Massachusetts to confront ICE detentions throughout the commonwealth?
Well, I reject that. I mean, everybody who's been apprehended wrongfully in my district, we have followed up on their cases, and many of the people we met with in Louisiana, by the way, are not so high profile, and there are some people that have been in detention for over a year. So, I think it's just wrong to say the Democrats are not focused in on people being wrongfully detained who are salt of the earth workers. We care about everybody. But we actually believe that people are entitled to due process, and that's what's at issue here. If you allow the Trump administration to say that this type of person or that type of person can be thrown into jail essentially without due process, then you're going down a slippery slope where it could be an American citizen next who is denied due process. Due process is an essential part of our Constitution. So is freedom of speech. So, we're concerned about everybody who this administration is targeting.
