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Twenty years after the Chinese army killed untold numbers of unarmed civilians in Beijing and other cities on and around June 3-4, 1989, the Chinese government continues to victimize survivors, victims' families, and others who challenge the official version of events, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch today releases "The Tiananmen Legacy," an assessment of the continuing impact of Tiananmen and a multimedia feature on the crackdown's 20th anniversary, which can be accessed at https://www.hrw.org/en/node/83112.
The Chinese Communist Party initially justified its actions during the bloody crackdown as a necessary response to a "counter-revolutionary incident," later revising its characterization of the event as a "political disturbance."
"The government's ongoing efforts to censor history, crush dissent, and harass survivors stands in stark contrast to the impressive economic and social developments in China in recent decades," said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "The Chinese government should recognize that 20 years of denial and repression have only caused the wounds of Tiananmen to fester, not heal."
The Chinese government has always refused to provide a list of those killed, "disappeared," or imprisoned, and has failed to publish verifiable casualty figures.
The Tiananmen Mothers, a group of mothers and parents of students and civilian victims, has established a list of more than 150 people who were killed after the army opened fire on civilians. The government has also consistently quashed all public discussion of June 1989, while persecuting those who participated in the demonstrations or who publicly question the government's version of events.
Today, the detention of Liu Xiaobo represents the most visible symbol of the government's ongoing hostility to those involved in the 1989 protests and to any form of organized opposition. One of China's best-known intellectual critics, Liu spent two years in prison for his role in supporting the Tiananmen students. Liu also prevented more bloodshed by successfully negotiating with the army the evacuation of the last remaining students on Tiananmen Square in the early morning of June 4. A regular interviewee of international media and scholars on June 4, Liu spent another three years in re-education-through-labor from 1996 to 1999 for a series of public calls questioning the one-party system, and was then put under a loose form of house arrest. On December 8, 2008, Liu was arrested once more on suspicion of being one of the organizers of a bold public petition for democracy and the rule of law titled Charter '08.
The text of Charter '08 included a direct reference to the June 4 events, as an example of the "long trail of human rights disasters" caused by the Communist Party of China's monopoly on power. Despite an international outcry, Liu continues to be held without charges.
"Liu Xiaobo epitomizes how the Chinese government has responded to Tiananmen in particular and peaceful critiques in general: by stifling them," said Richardson. "At the same time, Liu is emblematic of the tireless tenacity and courage of some Chinese citizens to fight for truth, justice, and democracy in the face of adversity."
Beginning in April 1989, workers, students, and others began to gather in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and in other cities. Most were demonstrating peacefully for a pluralistic political system. When the protests had not dispersed by late May, the government declared martial law, and then authorized the army to use lethal force to clear the streets of protesters. In the process of fulfilling that order, the army shot and killed untold numbers of unarmed civilians, many of whom were not connected to the protests. In Beijing, some citizens attacked army convoys and burned vehicles as the military moved through the city. Following the civilian killings, the Chinese government implemented a national crackdown and arrested thousands of people on "counter-revolutionary" charges, and on criminal charges including arson and disrupting social order.
The Chinese government was globally condemned for its crackdown on the protesters, and several countries imposed sanctions, including the ongoing European Union arms embargo. The Chinese government has rebuffed all efforts to seek a re-examination of the events of June 1989.
In 1990, then-President Jiang Zemin dismissed international condemnation of the Tiananmen Massacre as "much ado about nothing." In January 2001, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao defended the use of deadly force against unarmed civilians in June 1989 as "...timely and resolute measures...extremely necessary for the stability and development of the country."
"The Chinese government has made it virtually impossible for people to know about this major event in their own recent history," said Richardson. "And that should raise profound concerns globally about the government's capacity for manipulating information and evading accountability."
Ongoing Persecution and Censorship
Ongoing Persecution of Those Seeking Reassessment
Tiananmen's Survivors: Exiled, Marginalized and Harassed
Censoring History
Human Rights Watch Recommendations
To the Chinese Government
To the International Community
Ongoing Persecution of Those Seeking Reassessment
The Chinese government continues to persecute those who seek a public reassessment of the bloody crackdown. Chinese citizens who challenge the official version of what happened in June 1989 are subject to swift reprisals from security forces. These include relatives of victims who demand redress and eyewitnesses to the massacre and its aftermath whose testimonies contradict the official version of events. Even those who merely seek to honor the memory of the late Zhao Ziyang, the secretary general of the Communist Party of China in 1989 who was sacked and placed under house arrest for opposing violence against the demonstrators, find themselves subject to reprisals.
Some of those still targeted include:
Ding Zilin and the Mothers of Tiananmen: Ding is a retired philosophy professor at People's University in Beijing whose 17-year-old son, Jiang Jielian, was killed in central Beijing on June 4, 1989. Ding has since become the spokesperson and driving force behind the Mothers of Tiananmen, a loosely organized group of around 150 family members of other June 1989 victims. Security forces routinely subject Ding to detention, interrogation, and threats demanding silence from her and other Mothers of Tiananmen members ahead of "sensitive" dates, particularly June 4. "China has become like an airtight iron chamber and all the demands of the people about June 4, all the anguish, lament and moaning of the victims' relatives and the wounded have been sealed off," reads a petition by the Mothers of Tiananmen, signed by 127 people and submitted to China's parliament in March 2008.
Jiang Yanyong: Jiang is a 77-year-old army surgeon who treated some of the victims at Beijing's 301 Military Hospital in the immediate aftermath of the June 1989 military assault. Jiang first gained public prominence in 2003 for exposing the government's cover-up of the country's outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. In March 2004, Jiang wrote a letter to China's parliament, the National People's Congress, urging a reassessment of the government's position on the Tiananmen Massacre. The letter exposed the brutality of the June 1989 massacre, including the People's Liberation Army's use of "fragmentation bullets of the kind banned by international convention." Jiang subsequently told foreign media the government's response to that letter was to dispatch state security forces to abduct him from his office, hold him for seven weeks at an army guesthouse, and subject him to "study sessions." After being allowed to return home, Jiang was placed under house arrest for several months and barred from overseas travel. In March 2009, Jiang wrote a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao demanding an apology for the period he spent in detention in 2004 and the subsequent months of house arrest.
Zhang Shijun: Zhang is a40-year-old former soldier who took part in the military crackdown in Beijing on June 3-4. In March 2009, Zhang published an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao urging an official reassessment of the "June 4 tragedy, the event in China's recent history that causes bitter weeping and choking back tears." Zhang was detained by security forces shortly after his letter was made public, and remains under detention in an undisclosed location.
Sun Wenguang: Sun, a 75-year-old retired professor in Jinan City, Shandong province, was assaulted on April 4, 2009, by five plainclothes thugs who appear to have been working at official behest. He was en route to Jinan's Martyrs' Park to mourn Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese Communist Party secretary-general who tried to prevent the use of force by the military in June 1989. Zhao was stripped of his position following the crackdown and spent the last 15 years of life under house arrest in Beijing. The assault on Sun, which left him with three broken ribs, occurred just minutes after he had evaded some 20 uniformed police who attempted to prevent him from leaving the university campus where he lived.
Tiananmen's Survivors: Exiled, Marginalized and Harassed
The Chinese government is particularly hostile toward those individuals it has identified as part of the leadership of the 1989 Tiananmen student protests. Student leaders who served time in prison or fled China in the aftermath of the bloody crackdown of June 1989 have become unwilling exiles. Several of those former protest leaders have been turned back from China by Chinese immigration officials even when trying to visit aging family members they left behind or to attend their funerals. Student organizers who stayed in China remain subject to tight surveillance and harassment despite having served long prison terms for their participation in the protests of June 1989. Perhaps most tragically, survivors maimed or handicapped in the June 1989 military assault in Beijing and other major cities continue to face pressure from state security forces to lie or stay silent about the causes of their injuries.
Tiananmen survivors who continue to suffer due to the role they played in the student protests in 1989 include:
Wang Dan: A former Beijing University student leader who topped Beijing's Tiananmen most-wanted list until his arrest in 1989, Wang received a four-year prison sentence in 1991, was released in 1993 when China was bidding to host the Olympics, was re-arrested in 1995 for "subversion" and was sentenced to an 11-year prison term in 1996. Wang was sent to the United States in 1998 on medical parole and has been barred from return by Chinese immigration officials who have refused to issue him a new Chinese passport. In 2008, Wang launched a campaign to urge the Chinese government to allow him and other blacklisted former Tiananmen protest leaders to return to China in line with Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which specifies that, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Han Dongfang: Han was detained in June 1989 for his role in the Tiananmen protests and for organizing China's first independent trade union since 1949, and was subsequently held for 22 months in prison without charge. In 1992, the Chinese government permitted Han to go to the US for medical treatment, but subsequently cancelled his passport and has refused his multiple efforts to return to China without disclosing the legal basis for those refusals. Han is based in Hong Kong, where he researches labor-rights abuses and publishes the China Labor Bulletin.
Ma Shaofang: In June 1989, Ma was 10th on the Chinese government's list of most-wanted dissidents and served a three-year prison term for his role as a Tiananmen student protest organizer. Two decades later, Ma, now a Shenzhen-based businessman, continues to be subject to police monitoring of his movements and activities. On October 13, 2007, Ministry of State Security officers warned Ma not to attend a writers' conference in Beijing during the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. In a blog posting in which Ma recounted the encounter, the State Security officers warned that, "If you get into trouble, we will be there and it won't be good for you."
Fang Zheng: A 42-year-old former student at the Beijing Academy of Physical Science, Fang had his legs crushed on June 4 under a tank while pushing a female student protester out of the tank's path. Fang was subsequently expelled from school after refusing to publicly deny the source of his injury, but went on to become China's wheelchair discus and javelin champion in 1992 and 1993. However, Fang's Tiananmen connections prompted the Chinese government to bar him from competing in the Far East Games for the Disabled in Beijing in 1994 despite his promise not to discuss with foreign journalists the cause of his injury. Fang told a reporter from Singapore's New Paper in September 2008 that he maintained public silence and avoided travel to Beijing around the 2008 Beijing Olympics due to promises from government security forces that he would be given a job if he kept quiet and stayed away Beijing ahead of during the Games. "I will wait and see what they have to offer, since I have nothing more to lose," Fang said.
The Chinese government continues to systematically erase from the public record any mention of the events of June 1989 that do not conform to the government's assessment of the bloody crackdown as a "political disturbance."
China's online censors quickly remove any references to the 1989 crackdown, and internet search engines in China are carefully calibrated to filter out any images or references to the deaths of unarmed civilians for search requests on topics including "Tiananmen Square" and "June 4." Web searches for such terms typically yield "page could not be found" messages, and generally do not inform the user that the search has been censored.
Under dictates of China's official Propaganda Department, the domestic print media are forbidden to publish articles on the events of June 1989 inconsistent with the government's version. In 2003, then-US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton pulled her memoirs from sale in China after it was revealed that her Chinese publisher had without her approval omitted her references to the 1989 democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
Like individuals who speak publicly about Tiananmen, media outlets that do so are also punished. In June 2007, the Sichuan province daily newspaper the Chengdu Evening News reportedly sacked three editorial staff after the paper ran a classified ad which paid tribute to the families of victims of the Tiananmen Massacre. Copies of the paper which carried the one-line ad with the words "Saluting the strong mothers of the victims of 64 [a reference to June 4]" were quickly pulled from circulation.
On March 31, 2009, Beijing Public Security Bureau officers briefly detained Jiang Qisheng, 61, deputy chairman of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre and a former Tiananmen Square student protester, due to concerns that he was writing an article to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. "They said not a single article was allowed this year for the 20th anniversary," Jiang later told the South China Morning Post.
In 1995, former Tiananmen student protester and political activist Li Hai was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of violating state secrets laws for compiling a list of names of those killed in June 1989. Li spent the majority of his jail term in solitary confinement.
One result of this official chokehold on information about June 1989 is a profound lack of public knowledge of one of the most important events in China in living memory. At least three foreign news organizations including a US Public Broadcasting Service program, Frontline, have conducted informal surveys over the past 10 years, asking groups of university students and Beijing residents to identify the context of the photograph - iconic outside of China - of "tank man," an unidentified Beijing citizen who on June 5, 1989, stood down a column of 17 army tanks near Tiananmen Square. Few if any have been able - or willing - to do so.
Human Rights Watch Recommendations
To the Chinese Government:
To the International Community:
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
India's foreign secretary said that "both sides would stop all firing and military action on land and in the air and sea."
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates...
U.S. President Donald Trump said on social media Saturday morning that India and Pakistan agreed to a "full and immediate" cease-fire after marathon overnight talks between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who have engaged in tit-for-tat strikes in the wake of last month's Pahalgam massacre in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
"After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASE-FIRE," the U.S. president said on his Truth Social platform. "Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar also confirmed the development, according toGeo News.
"Speaking to the media, Dar expressed gratitude to the countries that played a role in achieving the cease-fire, noting that diplomatic efforts were underway throughout the day, following which a cease-fire agreement was reached," Geo News detailed. "He specifically acknowledged the role played by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the process."
Citing Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, NBC Newsreported that the cease-fire began at 5:00 pm local time. Misri said that "it was agreed that both sides would stop all firing and military action on land and in the air and sea."
The second Trump administration "has thrown agencies into chaos, disrupting critical services provided across our nation," the coalition behind the lawsuit said, welcoming the temporary restraining order.
A federal judge in California on Friday temporarily blocked what at coalition of labor unions, local governments, and nonprofits argued was "the unconstitutional dismantling of the federal government by the president of the United States on a scale unprecedented in this country’s history and in clear excess of his authority."
Since returning to office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump—aided by his so-callled Department of Government Efficiency and its de facto leader, billionaire Elon Musk—has worked to quickly overhaul the bureaucracy, even though "the president does not possess authority to reorganize, downsize, or otherwise transform the agencies of the federal government, unless and until Congress authorizes such action," as the coalition's complaint notes.
District Judge Susan Illston agreed with the groups and governments, which include the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Alliance for Retired Americans, Main Street Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, the city and county of San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, and more.
"The president has the authority to seek changes to executive branch agencies, but he must do so in lawful ways and, in the case of large-scale reorganizations, with the cooperation of the legislative branch," wrote Illston in a 42-page decision. "Many presidents have sought this cooperation before; many iterations of Congress have provided it. Nothing prevents the president from requesting this cooperation—as he did in his prior term of office."
"Indeed, the court holds the president likely must request congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime," said the judge, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by former President Bill Clinton.
Illston added that "a temporary restraining order is, by definition, temporary. The court will not consider defendants' request for a stay of execution of the temporary restraining order, as doing so would render the exercise pointless. The court must promptly proceed to consideration of a preliminary injunction."
Welcoming the development in a late Friday statement, the plaintiff coalition said that "the Trump administration's unlawful attempt to reorganize the federal government has thrown agencies into chaos, disrupting critical services provided across our nation."
"Each of us represents communities deeply invested in the efficiency of the federal government—laying off federal employees and reorganizing government functions haphazardly does not achieve that," the coalition added. "We are gratified by the court's decision today to pause these harmful actions while our case proceeds."
The "largest and most significant challenge to Trump's authority to remake the government without congressional approval," as the coalition called it, was filed April 28 by the organizations' legal team: Democracy Forward, Altshuler Berzon LLP, Protect Democracy, Public Rights Project, and State Democracy Defenders Fund.
said the Trump administration’s vision was to fundamentally degrade the services that Congress funds agencies to carry out, raising a profound separation of powers conflict, as Congress set up a specific process for the federal government to reorganize itself.
Illston's decision came just hours after an emergency hearing, during which coalition attorney Danielle Leonard "said the Trump administration's vision was to fundamentally degrade the services that Congress funds agencies to carry out, raising a profound separation of powers conflict," according toThe New York Times.
As the newspaper detailed:
"There's a presumption of regularity that used to exist with respect to the government's actions that I think they need to re-earn," she said.
Ms. Leonard said the Trump administration has never been able to point to any specific authority through which the president could seize that power from Congress. And she said that the government has consistently offered competing and contradictory explanations of why Mr. Trump can authorize the massive restructuring without Congress.
"It's an ouroboros: the snake eating its tail," she said.
Signaling a desire to keep moving through the process swiftly, Illston gave the plaintiff coalition until next Wednesday to file a motion for a preliminary injunction, and the federal defendants—Trump along with various federal agencies and their leaders—until the following Monday to respond, with a limit of 25 pages for both.
Even if the coalition's lawsuit ultimately succeeds, Republicans have a narrow majority in both chambers of Congress, meaning Trump could potentially work with lawmakers to pursue a similar gutting of the federal government before the midterm elections.
"There has been no evidence that has been introduced by the government other than the op-ed," U.S. District Judge William Sessions III said, referring to Öztürk's article urging divestment from Israel.
Rümeysa Öztürk, one of several pro-Palestine scholars kidnapped and imprisoned by the Trump administration under its dubious interpretation of an 18th-century law and a Cold War-era national security measure, was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody Friday following a federal judge's order.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions III in Vermont ruled that Öztürk—a 30-year-old Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University in Massachusetts and Fulbright scholar—was illegally detained in March, when masked plainclothes federal agents snatched her off a suburban Boston street in broad daylight in what eyewitnesses and advocates likened to a kidnapping and flew her to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Louisiana.
"Thank you so much for all the support and love," Öztürk told supporters outside the facility following her release.
The government admits that Öztürk committed no crime. She was targeted because of an
opinion piece published in Tufts Daily advocating divestment from Israel amid the U.S.-backed nation's genocidal assault on Gaza and its apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and colonization in the rest of Palestine. Öztürk was arrested despite a U.S. State Department determination that there were no grounds for revoking her visa.
"There has been no evidence that has been introduced by the government other than the op-ed," said Sessions, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton. "That literally is the case."
BREAKING: a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to immediately release on bail Rumeysa Ozturk, a Muslim grad student at Tufts University who was abducted and abused by ICE agents, all because she wrote an editorial, yes, an editorial, critical of the Israeli government's genocide.
[image or embed]
— CAIR (The Council on American-Islamic Relations) ( @cairnational.bsky.social) May 9, 2025 at 11:12 AM
"There is no evidence here as to the motivation, absent consideration of the op-ed, so that creates unto itself a very significant substantial claim that the op-ed—that is, the expression of one's opinion as ordinarily protected by the First Amendment—form the basis of this particular detention," the judge continued, adding that Öztürk's "continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens."
"There is absolutely no evidence that she has engaged in violence, or advocated violence, she has no criminal record," Sessions noted. "She has done nothing other than, essentially, attend her university and expand her contacts in her community in such a supportive way."
"Her continued detention cannot stand," he added.
The Trump administration has openly flouted judge's rulings—including a U.S. Supreme Court order—that direct it to release detained immigrants. Sessions' Friday ruling follows his earlier order to send Öztürk to Vermont and Wednesday's 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmation of the judge's directive, both of which have been ignored by the administration.
Seeing that Öztürk was still in ICE custody hours after his order, Sessions reiterated his directive Friday afternoon.
"In light of the court's finding of no flight risk and no danger to the community, petitioner is to be released from ICE custody immediately on her own recognizance, without any form of body-worn GPS or other ICE monitoring at this time," the judge wrote.
Multiple media outlets reported Öztürk's release Friday afternoon.
Mahsa Khanbabai, Öztürk's attorney, toldCourthouse News Service she's "relieved and ecstatic" that her client has been ordered released.
"Unfortunately, it is 45 days too late," Khanbabai lamented. "She has been imprisoned all these days for simply writing an op-ed that called for human rights and dignity for the people in Palestine. When did speaking up against oppression become a crime? When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?"
The Trump administration has dubiously invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the president to detain dor deport citizens of countries with which the U.S. is at war, in a bid to justify Öztürk's persecution. The administration has also cited the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to order the expulsion of noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests.
"When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?"
Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who lied about Öztürk supporting Hamas—has used such determinations to target people for engaging in constitutionally protected speech and protest.
"We do it every day," Rubio said in March in defense of the policy. "Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas."
Rubio has invoked the law to target numerous other students who the government admits committed no crimes. These include Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Yunseo Chung—all permanent U.S. residents—as well as Ranjani Srinivasan and others. Far-right, pro-Israel groups like Betar and Canary Mission have compiled lists containing the names of these and other pro-Palestine students that are shared with the Trump administration for possible deportation.
Foreign nationals—and some U.S. citizens wrongfully swept up in the Trump administration's mass deportation effort—are imprisoned in facilities including private, for-profit detention centers, where there are widespread reports of poor conditions and alleged abuses.
These include denial of medical care, insufficient access to feminine hygiene products, and rotten food at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, where Öztürk—who, according to Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), has received no religious or dietary accommodations and had her hijab forcibly removed—is being held.
Öztürk also suffers from asthma and told Sessions via Zoom Friday that her attacks have increased behind bars due to stress. Dr. Jessica McCannon, a pulmonologist, testified that Öztürk's asthma appears to be poorly controlled in ICE custody, according to
courtroom coverage on the social media site Bluesky by freelance journalist Joshua J. Friedman.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was among those who on Friday demanded Öztürk's immediate release, while other lawmakers and human rights and free speech defenders celebrated Sessions' decision.
"Rümeysa Öztürk has finally been ordered released," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said on social media. "She has been unlawfully detained for more than six weeks in an ICE facility in Louisiana, more than 1,500 miles away from Somerville. This is a victory for Rümeysa, for justice, and for our democracy."
In the United States, we guarantee free speech. No one here will lose their rights and freedom for publishing an op-ed. This is a win for the rule of law. Rümeysa is free!
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— Representative Becca Balint ( @balint.house.gov) May 9, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that "it is unfathomable that in the United States legal system, it takes 45 days for a judge to rule that people can't be put behind bars for writing op-eds the government doesn't like."
"Without a system committed to its principles, the Constitution is just words on paper, and they don't mean much if this can happen here," Stern continued. "Öztürk's abduction and imprisonment is one of the most shameful chapters in First Amendment history."
"We're thankful that Judge Sessions moved it one step closer to an end and we call on the Trump administration to release Öztürk immediately and not attempt to stall with any further authoritarian nonsense," he added.
Amid President Donald Trump's defunding threats and pressure from ICE officials, universities have told "many hundreds" of international students that they have lost their immigration status and must immediately self-deport. These notifications were based on the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) termination of students' records on the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a database used by schools and authorities to access visa information.
Although DHS admitted in court that it had no authority to use SEVIS to revoke students' status, the Trump administration still canceled more than 1,800 visas before reversing course last month pending an ICE policy revamp.
In addition to moving to deport pro-Palestine students, the Trump administration is sending Latin American immigrants—including wrongfully expelled Maryland man Kilmar Abrego García—to a notorious prison in El Salvador, and the president has repeatedly threatened to send natural-born U.S. citizens there.
As with Öztürk and other detained students, the Trump administration has dubiously invoked the Alien Enemies Act in trying to deport García and others. However, federal judges—including multiple Trump appointees—have thwarted some of these efforts.
On Friday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said that Trump and his advisers are "actively looking at" suspending habeas corpus as a means of overcoming judicial pushback against the administration's deportation blitz.
"Well, the Constitution is clear—and that of course is the supreme law of the land—that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion," Miller told reporters at the White House. No foreign entity has invaded the United States since Japanese forces landed in the Aleutian Islands in the then-territory of Alaska during World War II.
Critics pointed out that Miller's proposal is, in fact, blatantly unconstitutional.
"Since it appears needs to be said: The authority to suspend habeas corpus lies with Congress, not the president, and is only legal during extreme circumstances of rebellion or invasion," Democratic pollster and strategist Matt McDermott said on Bluesky. "Stephen Miller is full of shit."
It wasn't just Democrats and Palestine defenders who cheered Sessions' ruling Friday. Billy Binion, who covers "all things injustice" for the libertarian website Reason, said on social media that the government's "entire case against her is that... she wrote an op-ed."
"Hard to overstate how bleak—and frankly embarrassing—it is that the Trump administration wants to jail and deport someone for speech," he continued. "In America."