Nathan Howard/AP
Amid intense outrage over the arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts student who was ambushed and detained by plainclothes federal immigration officers this week, Marco Rubio appeared gratified.
“We revoked her visa, it’s an F-1 visa, I believe,” the secretary of State told reporters at a press conference in Guyana on Thursday when asked about the arrest. “We revoked it and I’ll tell you why.”
“If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student,” Rubio continued with increasing conviction, “and you tell us that the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we are not going to give you a visa.”
“Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” he added, estimating that as many as 300 people have similarly had their visas revoked as the Trump administration pursues its dramatic crackdown on free speech.
Yet nowhere in his remarks did Rubio provide evidence that Ozturk—who was on her way to break the Ramadan fast when federal agents in face masks arrested her in broad daylight—participated in the types of destructive behavior Rubio outlined as grounds for deportation. Instead, as many have now reported, Ozturk was the co-author of a 2024 opinion piece in a student newspaper criticizing Tufts’ handling of student demands to divest from companies with ties to Israel. A Fox News description of the same op-ed even appeared to acknowledge the scant evidence that Ozturk was the kind of trouble-making activist characterized by Rubio: “While her op-ed never mentioned support for Hamas, the terrorist network, it did call on the university to divest from companies,” the Fox story noted.
In a court filing, Ozturk’s attorneys noted that she has been criticized by Canary Mission, a website documenting individuals it deems as holding hateful views toward Israel. The site, which focuses on students and professors, has been referenced in multiple court cases related to campus protests over Gaza. As Ozturk’s own lawsuit notes:
“In February 2025, the website Canary Mission published a profile on Rumeysa, including her photograph, claiming she “engaged in anti-Israel activism in March 2024….” The profile describes Rumeysa as “a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.” Its sole support for the contention that Rümeysa “engaged in anti-Israel activism” was a link and screenshots of the March 2024 opinion piece.
The lawsuit also cited Rubio’s push as a US senator to punish pro-Palestinian activists protesting Israel’s devastation of Gaza. Here he was in 2023, calling on then-President Joe Biden to revoke visas and initiate deportation proceedings for foreign nationals who were supposedly “supporting Hamas.”
“You are not even American,” he said from the Senate floor. “You’re a foreign national. You’re here because we gave you a visa to be here temporarily, and now you’re out there defending and supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization? You need to go.”
That language eerily echoes the rhetoric Rubio used Thursday, as he once again seemed to imagine himself chastising protesters face-to-face: “Don’t come here. If you’re going to do that, go somewhere else. Don’t come here.”
Now, as Trump’s secretary of State, Rubio is far better positioned to convince the president to embrace his undemocratic approach to the country’s visa process. That access to power doesn’t seem to have convinced him to stop talking about protesters like a puffed-up bully at the playground.
