Hundreds of people joined Jewish residents, rabbis and community leaders at City Hall Plaza in Boston on Thursday, calling for the release of all international students who have been detained by federal immigration authorities.
Protesters at the self-branded “Seder in the Streets” rally chanted “not in our name!” as they accused President Trump of exploiting claims of antisemitism in his administration’s crackdown on universities.
“To deport Rümeysa Öztürk or Mohsen Mahdawi or Mahmoud Khalil in the name of fighting antisemitism does not make Jews safer,” Rabbi Claudia Kreiman of Temple Beth Zion said during the rally. “To have anyone deported with or without a reason and without due process is not safety. It is a mark of what dictatorship looks like.”
Öztürk, a Turkish national and Tufts graduate student, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March and was denied bond on Wednesday by a federal immigration judge.
She is also one of roughly 1,500 international students who have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration upon being linked in some way to pro-Palestinian activism.
“Just seeing Rümeysa dragged off the streets and put into an unmarked car brought back so many stories I have heard about how Jews were treated in different countries,” said rabbinical student Aron Wander. “It felt so clear that this is a moment in which we all need to be speaking up against authoritarianism and fascism.”
Sherry Flashman of Brookline described the deportations of pro-Palestinian activists and students in the name of fighting antisemitism as bogus.
“It’s being used to take away rights first of these pro-Palestinian protestors, but that will be used against other groups as well,” Flashman said. “I feel it’s very important, particularly for Jews in Boston, to stand up and say this is not in our name and we’re risking the rule of law and our democratic rights, and it has to stop.”
Many of the protesters also referenced the Trump administration citing concerns of antisemitism as the rational for its scrutiny of Harvard University .
On Monday, Harvard president Alan Garber said the school would not agree to demands pushed by the Trump administration in order to maintain federal funding. Hours later, the administration announced it would freeze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts to the institution.
“It’s really clear that they are weaponizing antisemitism to go after immigrants, protesters, organizers,” said Wander. “Antisemitism is a problem, and we’re committed to fighting it, and we also recognize the fight against antisemitism is bound up in the fight against all forms of oppression and racism and xenophobia.”
The rally also took place on the sixth day of Passover, and Wander says one of the Jewish holiday’s central messages is that no group of people has the right to oppress others.
