Fox host cheers on arrest of Tufts student who wrote critical op-ed: “I love the message it's sending to other students causing unrest”
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From the March 27, 2025, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): This Rumeysa Ozturk is a Turkish national who's maintaining an F-1 visa as a PhD student at Tufts University. She was arrested yesterday — you'll see it on camera — after writing an opinion essay criticizing the university response to the demands that Tufts, quote, “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel," and I imagine there's more to her case. Your thoughts?
KERRI URBAHN (FOX LEGAL EDITOR): Yeah. This struck me a bit like the Mahmoud Khalil case that's out of Columbia University in New York City. You know, there are a couple of threshold points that I think people just need to be aware of. One, you know, whether you have a visa or you're a lawful permanent resident, do you have more rights than the average noncitizen? Yes. But are you still a noncitizen? Yes. So what does that mean? The attorney general has the discretion to detain you, and that decision to detain is generally not reviewable by a judge. And then secondly, the secretary of state has broad discretion here that if they believe a noncitizen's presence or activities could adversely affect foreign policy, they have the authority to remove you.
So those are significant laws that are at play here. Now, of course, anybody who feels that they've been wrongfully detained or wrongfully removed, whether they're, you know, as a noncitizen, they have multiple opportunities to appeal along the way. And so they have a lot of bites at the apple, so we'll see how this one plays out.
KILMEADE: So do they, for example, continue to go to school? They just wait for their day in court? I mean, how many have the financial wherewithal to start paying for a lawyer in another country where you're supposed to be studying for a PhD?
URBAHN: Well, if you're detained like this person is, in the facility in Louisiana, you're in Louisiana, and you're at that detention facility. So then you have to wait for something called a master calendar hearing, which is your first step in the removal proceedings. That's where you basically check the paperwork and you explain, the judge explains to you, why you may be removed. You have an opportunity to make your first arguments. But that's the first of a series of hearings.
If you were to lose there, then you can appeal to an administrative board. If you were to lose there, you can then appeal to the federal appeals court and then ultimately the Supreme Court. Now I will say this, though, if you are to lose at the administrative board stage, you can be deported at that point and then make your appeals to the federal appeals court outside of the country, in another country.
KILMEADE: I love the message it's sending to other students causing unrest.
URBAHN: It is sending a message.