https://consortiumnews.com/2025/05/15/militant-zionists-spurred-us-arrest-of-pro-palestine-student-judge-rules/

Militant Zionists Spur Arrest of Pro-Palestine Student, Judge Rules
May 15, 2025
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A federal judge’s ruling in Massachusetts provides the first court admission that a Zionist extremist group is working with U.S. authorities to violate free speech rights, writes Robert Inlakesh.

By Robert Inlakesh
MintPress News

A U.S. federal court in Massachusetts has ruled that the detention of a former student who expressed pro-Palestine views was unconstitutional and that it was a punitive measure triggered almost solely by a complaint from the Zionist militant group Betar.

Late last week, Judge Angel Kelley wrote in her decision that a former student at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), detained unlawfully by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), be released, providing the first court admission that a Zionist extremist groups is working with U.S. authorities to violate free speech rights.

Judge Kelley wrote that the government’s “pursuit of [the former student’s] detention seems to have been almost exclusively triggered by Betar Worldwide.”

However, the narrative originally propagated around Ercelik’s case fell apart under further scrutiny.

On April 8, the Betar Worldwide group, which has a history of support for terrorism, posted a screenshot of a profile made of Ercelik by the infamous Canary Mission, known for doxing [or publicly exposing] pro-Palestine university students, writing that they had submitted his name for deportation.

According to a 31-page court document released in the case, the former student’s name was indeed submitted to the authorities. Within 24 hours, the deputy assistant secretary of state for visa services then sent a memo to ICE. On April 10, the Department of Homeland Security issued an administrative warrant for Ercelik’s arrest.

[See: The Hate Group Helping Trump Deport Israel’s Critics]

The former student in question is Efe Ercelik, a Turkish national who entered the U.S. on an F-1 student visa. After a physical altercation with a Jewish student during a protest in late 2023, the American corporate media and pro-Israel groups pointed to his case as evidence of rampant attacks against Jewish students on campus.

A week later, ICE agents showed up at the former student’s home demanding that he surrender himself for arrest. Yet, when the agents were asked to present a warrant, they stated they didn’t have one.

That is when they began issuing threats to Ercelik, telling him that if he “declined to surrender himself to those officers’ custody, regardless of their lack of a warrant, they would ensure that Petitioner will be charged with a federal hate crime and spend many years in federal prison.”

According to the court’s ruling, Ercelik’s detention was carried out in reaction to his political beliefs, which are protected under the First Amendment, and was “almost exclusively triggered” by the Betar group. The judge in the case, Angel Kelley, wrote in her decision that the incident “rises to the level of near absurdity.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
@ReichlinMelnick
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UPDATE: The judge's decision on this came out last night, and it's a DOOZY.

It exposes how the Trump admin stripped a guy of a student visa because Betar tweeted about him, then issued an ICE arrest warrant for him based on an outright lie just 48 hours after Betar's tweet.