Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

Leakers Helped Destroy the Deportation Case Against Tufts Student

The disclosures revealed the case was built entirely on an op-ed Rümeysa Öztürk co-wrote, a chilling attack on free speech.

The video was shocking, and devoid of context, it appeared Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk was abducted off the street by masked men and hauled to a waiting van. In what turned out to be an immigration operation, the Trump administration arrested Öztürk in March 2025, jailed her in horrific conditions for 45 days, and sought to expel her from the country, claiming she supported terrorism, Hamas, antisemitism, or whatever jumbled combination of the three they lazily regurgitate whenever they target pro-Palestine speech. 

We now know that the sole basis for Öztürk’s ordeal was an op-ed she co-authored in the Tufts Daily where she and three colleagues echoed opinions shared by millions of Americans about Israel’s war on Gaza. It didn’t mention Hamas, terrorism, or Jewish people. But it landed Öztürk, who was enrolled on an F-1 student visa, on the website of Canary Mission, a site that maintains a blacklist of activists, writers, and ordinary people who have voiced pro-Palestine views. The government has used the site to find people to deport for their constitutionally protected speech, according to court transcripts. 

This week, a judge finally dismissed the deportation case against Öztürk (although the government can still challenge that decision if it has the nerve to do so). This happened not because the legal system worked but because of the actions of courageous whistleblowers, whose disclosures discredited the administration’s preposterous claims.

In April 2025, the Washington Post reported on leaked State Department memos from days before Öztürk’s arrest. According to the Post, the first memo stated the administration “had not produced any evidence” linking Öztürk to terrorist organizations or antisemitic activities. A second memo recommended revoking her visa anyway on the grounds that she “engaged in anti-Israel activism in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023” by co-bylining the op-ed. These memos made clear that the administration deliberately decided to send masked ICE agents to abduct Öztürk near her Somerville, Massachusetts, apartment despite knowing full well it had no legitimate basis for its actions.

These were the early days of masked government goons kidnapping people off American streets, so the arrest got significant media attention. In the face of intense scrutiny, the administration continued to knowingly mislead the public, with the Department of Homeland Security claiming Öztürk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas” — without stating what those actions were. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also led the smear campaign against Öztürk, suggesting without evidence that she had been involved in activities “like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus” on campus, which he claimed would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.” 

The government can’t rely on operational security to cover up its own transgressions, and if revealing illegality impedes illegality, it’s all the better.

The government can’t rely on operational security to cover up its own transgressions, and if revealing illegality impedes illegality, it’s all the better.

Freedom of the Press Foundation, where I work, filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests with the State Department for the memos. The agency ignored us, forcing us to file a lawsuit. The agency continues to waste taxpayer dollars to stonewall us, even after a separate lawsuit won the release of one of the documents we requested. 

The State Department claims transparency would violate unspecified “privacy interests,” presumably of the same person they quite publicly abducted, crammed into a very not-private jail cell, and slandered as a supporter of terrorism to the national media. The government has also claimed releasing the records would reveal law enforcement and investigative techniques and procedures. This reasoning is totally bunk: For one, the government publicly brags about its anti-speech immigration enforcement techniques — if you can call plucking people listed on a disreputable doxxing website a technique. And two, we’re talking about procedures that result in completely innocent people being incarcerated over op-eds, which renders them ineffectual, unconstitutional, and illegal. The government can’t rely on operational security to cover up its own transgressions, and if revealing illegality impedes illegality, it’s all the better.    

Transparency doesn’t just hinder the unconstitutional targeting of immigrants — it makes it harder for the government to trample on the rest of our rights. This administration doesn’t value the First Amendment rights of citizens any more than those of noncitizens; immigrants are just the low-hanging fruit. 

When the government ignores and abuses laws designed to ensure transparency, it’s no wonder that people of conscience decide to leak news to the press and public. This is why, at the same time it’s persecuting the press and looking to expand ICE abuses, the government is demonizing whistleblowers. The Trump administration is certainly not the first to claim leaks are uniquely dangerous, but the escalation has been dramatic. Administration officials from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have all called leakers national security threats. Their position — which they’ve also adopted in their attack on the right to film law enforcement — is that they’re taking away our right to know for our own good.  

It’s been proven false every time, including when Bondi reversed a Biden-era policy protecting journalist-source confidentiality, blamed leakers for the change, and said whistleblowers “undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people.” Bondi also called leaks “illegal and wrong.” 

She focused her feigned outrage on the New York Times and the Washington Post reporting an intelligence community memo that completely undercut the Trump administration’s legal rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans — reporting that another one of our FOIAs corroborated. The policy change came the same month the Post reported on the leaked Öztürk memos. 

The leaks didn’t stop last April, despite Bondi’s efforts. As FPF’s Caitlin Vogus noted, in recent months, leaks about immigration enforcement have revealed everything from ICE’s alarming instruction that officers can enter homes without a warrant signed by a judge to its taking a page out of Canary Mission’s book to label people exercising their well-established right to protest the administration’s immigration enforcement as “domestic terrorists.” 

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None of these revelations hurt legitimate national security or law enforcement operations. Instead, they reveal the operations’ illegitimacy and embarrass the administration. The way for the press to win the administration’s war against leaks is to publish more of them, and connect the dots when they’re proven correct, like in Öztürk’s case. That way, the administration’s alarmist narratives about leaks don’t get more press than when its narratives inevitably collapse.

IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.

What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. 

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Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.

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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.

We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.

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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.

We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.

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