WASHINGTON, D.C.—Chants of “Free Rumeysa! Free Llewellyn!” echoed coast to coast on April 1 as Service Employees (SEIU) members and their allies demanded the release of union activists and others grabbed off university streets and shipped away because they spoke out for Palestinian freedom.
The union as a whole joined their demand in a big way. At night, colored windows lit up the SEIU headquarters in downtown D.C., declaring, “Free Speech. Free workers.”
“Tonight, we’re lighting up SEIU HQ to send a clear message: No worker should be silenced or intimidated. When we shine a light on injustice, we refuse to be ignored,” the caption on the Twitter photo of the lit-up headquarters reads.
The cases reflect a pattern of retaliatory arrests targeting Palestinian rights supporters, labor activists, and racial justice organizers by the Republican Trump government. The ACLU pledged investigations, while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., called the arrests “a blatant abuse of power.”
The protests centered around masked and hooded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents unjustly detaining at least two student activists, one of them a union leader at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Protesters called those arrests and detentions a “dangerous assault on free speech and workers’ rights.”
The nationwide protests, organized under the campaign #4The1st, highlighted the cases of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student and SEIU Local 509 member, violently arrested by masked federal agents in late March, and Llewellyn Dixon, a 50-year green card holder and SEIU 925 member detained since February.
Ozturk, a Tufts sociology student and activist for Palestinian rights, was surrounded and snatched off a public street in Somerville, Mass., on March 25 by plainclothes and ICE officers and hustled into an unmarked van.
Her arrest came after she co-authored an op-ed criticizing U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Despite holding a valid student visa, ICE shipped her to a Louisiana detention center—violating a court order prohibiting her removal from Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice.
ICE agents send other activists to that same Louisiana jail, where they’re held incommunicado from families, friends, supporters, and their lawyers. Trump, of course, wants to throw them out of the country.
Angry SEIU President April Verrett denounced the arrests, detentions, and threats in no uncertain terms.
Ozturk’s “arrest, with no charges filed, is yet another chilling example of this administration’s efforts to use immigration actions to target and silence people merely for criticizing U.S. policy in the Middle East,” Verrett said. Ozturk was grabbed while on her way to services for Ramadan.
“Ozturk, from Turkey, had a valid student visa, and her lawyer has no idea where she has been taken or why, though she recently co-authored an op-ed in the student newspaper in support of the people of Palestine.
About freedom to speak our mind
“This is about the freedom we all have to speak our minds without fear of government attacks. The First Amendment is being burned before our very eyes by an administration…willing to do whatever it takes to carry out its extremist agenda.”
“Whatever it takes” includes forcing universities to grovel for restoration of federal grants by promising crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protesters or even barring Moslem students—and in one case, an M.D.—returning from overseas visits to re-enter the country, despite valid visas.
“We will not forget Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student activist from Columbia University, Badar Khan Suri, a professor and postdoctoral scholar on religion and peace studies from Georgetown University, Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor of medicine and kidney transplant specialist from Brown University, and others whose names we don’t yet know,” Verrett said. Alawieh, returning to Rhode Island, was the barred doctor.
“America’s role as a beacon of freedom and human rights is being extinguished, and our leading universities are rapidly becoming graveyards for free speech rights, with students and faculty living in fear.
“As a union representing workers across higher education, including faculty, graduate workers, and administrative staff, we call upon university officials, elected leaders, and the courts to stand together to defend the rights of students and faculty,” Verrett ended.
The cases of the arrested and disappearing students have become flashpoints in the larger struggle against Trump’s attacks on workers—whether immigrants or not—and their unions.
The SEIU members’ detentions are part of a broader wave of retaliation against immigrant workers and activists, particularly when they are vocal in support of Palestine, workers’ rights, or anything opposed by the Trump regime.
In Washington State, ICE detained union organizer Alfredo Juarez Zeferino. Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old Columbia University student and green card holder who has lived in the U.S. since childhood, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian solidarity activist at Columbia, were arrested under similar circumstances earlier in March.
And, just as ICE grabs anyone with brown skin—legal or not, migrant or not—Trump has his ICE agents deport anyone they want, even if they’re wrong.
The Trump administration admitted in a March 31 court filing it wrongfully deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a legally protected Maryland resident and Smart Union Local 100 apprentice, to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.” Now the Trump government says it cannot return him.
Garcia is being held in a notorious Salvadoran jail. His five-year-old son, who has autism and a hearing impairment, and his wife remain in the U.S.
Garcia’s wife Jennifer told CASA that the family including three children is devastated. CASA is “a national powerhouse organization building power and improving the quality of life in working-class, Black, Latino, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, and Immigrant communities.”
Always been there
“Kilmar is an excellent father,” she said. “He has always been there for our three children and all of their needs. Two of them are on the autism spectrum, and our third has epilepsy. He has been the main provider of our household and the love of my life for over seven years.
“Since our family has been separated, I have been devastated and confused. I lost my life partner, my children lost their father, and all of our family, neighbors, co-workers, and friends have been devastated due to this unjust family separation.”
Smart President Michael Coleman condemned the deportation. “Brother Kilmar was helping to build this country. What did he get in return? Arrest and deportation to a nation with documented human rights abuses. We demand his return–and justice for all workers targeted by this regime,” Coleman said.
Dixon, the SEIU green card holder, is a home healthcare worker and mother of three. She was detained at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport upon returning from the Philippines. A legal U.S. resident for 50 years, she faces deportation over a decades-old misdemeanor, a move the SEIU called a “blatant attempt to intimidate labor organizers.”
The nationwide rallies for Dixon, Ozturk, and the others drew support from many unions. Among them: Starbucks Workers United–whose members protested at their stores–the United Auto Workers, Boston members of the United Electrical Workers, the Union of Southern Service Workers, which mobilized from Atlanta to Durham, N.C., and the Public Employees Federation (PEF), an AFSCME affiliate, in New York.
Nia Winston, Secretary-Treasurer of Unite HERE, said “The detention of our union sister, Rumeysa Ozturk, for exercising her right to free speech is unacceptable. We will fight the administration’s efforts to silence, distract, and divide us. Let’s be clear: We are the people. Respect our 1st Amendment and Constitutional rights!”
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., accused the Trump administration of weaponizing ICE. “Donald Trump’s efforts to silence dissent won’t stop our collective power. We demand freedom for Rumeysa—-and an end to this persecution.”
The Communist Party USA joined the mix, saying the “alarming pattern of abducting students by masked ICE agents on the basis of their political views and stripping them of legal status with no due process is a violation of basic constitutional rights. The democratic rights and civil liberties of everyone are endangered.”
“Demand the immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk and all political prisoners!”
The #4The1st campaign demanded “Immediate release of Ozturk, Dixon, and all unjustly detained workers, an end to retaliatory deportations of activists and union members and congressional hearings on ICE’s targeting of dissent.”
“Free speech is a right, not a privilege,” the SEIU said. “This is about defending our right to organize, speak out, and live without fear.”
People’s World readers can contact Congress here to demand an end to the targeting of student visa holders and the assault on due process. You can also sign on to the SEIU letter campaign here.
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