Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) accused President Donald Trump of putting the country under a state of “quasi-martial law” after reviewing the “chilling” cloak-and-dagger arrest of a Tufts University graduate student by immigration agents.
The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national in the U.S. on an academic visa, was taken into custody Tuesday evening near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, when on her way to meet friends for a Ramadan meal when she was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security.
The student’s lawyer stated that Ozturk was in valid F-1 visa status at the time of her arrest and while no criminal charges have been filed, DHS claims she was involved in activities supporting Hamas.
The moment of Ozturk’s arrest was caught on CCTV camera as a plainclothes agent approached the student.
After showing the clip during Thursday’s Morning Joe, host Mika Brzezinski branded the video “incredibly disturbing” and asked Murphy for his thoughts after having now seen it.
In response, Murphy blasted Trump for his “worrying” invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to conduct arrests, warning Americans “should care” about what’s happening.
The video is really chilling. And this should matter to every single American. Okay, first of all the president doesn’t need the Alien Enemies Act in order to remove from this country. People who pose a threat to the nation, people who have engaged in criminal behavior or who have coordinated with terrorist groups, he has that power under existing law to remove from the country non-citizens. So he doesn’t need this authority.
What he is trying to do is put America on a war footing. This is an act that has only been exercised three times in American history. During the war of 1812, during the First World War, and during the Second World War. It is a wartime authority, and what you really worry about is the president continuing to move forward in exercising wartime powers in order to suspend additional elements of the constitution.
He, of course, has shown affection for something called the Insurrection Act, which would put the military in charge of everyday law enforcement in this country.
You are watching along multiple channels this massive slide away from democracy and democratic norms. And so that video is chilling because a the president doesn’t need that act to be able to remove a threat, but it speaks to his willingness to try to put America in a kind of quasi-martial law that ultimately will come to be a threat, not just to green card holders, but to American citizens as well.
So it’s a really worrying time and everybody in America should care what’s happening.
Watch above via MSNBC.
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