TV News LIES

A Tufts University student who was detained by US immigration authorities this week, in an arrest that caused widespread outrage, cannot be deported without a court order, a US judge ordered on Friday.

Rümeysa Öztürk, 30, was detained by masked, plainclothes officers as she walked in a Boston-area suburb on Tuesday, an incident that was captured on surveillance footage that has since gone viral. Öztürk, who is being threatened with deportation to Turkey, is a Fulbright scholar and doctoral student in the US with a visa.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said Öztürk’s visa was terminated, accusing her of engaging in activities in support of Hamas, but providing no evidence to substantiate that claim. Her attorneys, which include lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, have said the arrest appeared to be retaliation for an opinion piece that she and three other students co-wrote for the student newspaper last year, advocating that the university “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel”.

More...

Georgia’s Republican-dominated state Senate is going forward with an investigation of Stacey Abrams, a move that comes as President Donald Trump has made a target of the two-time Democratic nominee for Georgia governor.

Republican State Sen. Bill Cowsert of Athens said Thursday that he and other Republicans want to further examine recent ethics findings that voter participation group New Georgia Project improperly coordinated with Abrams’ 2018 campaign for governor.

“We have developed somewhat of a problem these days with dark money in politics, with secret money being used to fund campaigns,” Cowsert said. “The whole purpose of our campaign finance laws is to put sunshine on the issues.”

More...

A federal judge on Friday blocked U.S. President Donald Trump's administration from deporting migrants to countries with which they had no existing relationship without giving them a chance to raise claims that they would face persecution or torture if sent there.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston issued a nationwide temporary restraining order designed to protect migrants subject to final orders of removal from being swiftly deported to countries other than those that had already been identified during immigration proceedings.

His decision came in a lawsuit filed on Sunday by a group of migrants represented by immigrant rights advocates challenging a policy U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently adopted that is aimed at fast-tracking the deportations of thousands of migrants who had been previously released from detention.

More...

A Russian scientist from Harvard Medical School has been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to her friends and colleagues.

On Wednesday, Cora Anderson, who works with the Russian scientist Kseniia Petrova, shared the news of Petrova’s detention on Facebook, saying the Russian scientist arrived at Boston Logan international airport on 16 February from a trip to France when she was stopped by US authorities.