Things got very entertaining during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, May 21, during which U.S. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) clashed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio over his alleged violations of the Constitution in giving a Turkish grad student the boot from America by revoking her visa.
The Turkish grad student at issue is named Rumeysa Ozturk. She was a PhD student at Tufts University, and she authored an op-ed critical of Israel, accusing it of genocide against the Palestinians. In March, her visa was revoked by the State Department, which led to Rep. Jayapal’s freakout. Rubio nearly brought her to tears by repeatedly shutting down her points.
It began with Jayapal snapping, “Mr. Secretary, do you really think that Ms Ozturk’s Op-Ed results in a foreign policy consequence for the United States?” Continuing with her tirade, she also snapped, “Where in the Constitution does it say that the secretary of state can override First Amendment protections of free speech?”
Defending the State Department’s decision to yank her visa, noting that there is no constitutional right anyone has to a visa and, rather, it’s a privilege, implying that it is a privilege we shouldn’t extend to those who protest our political matters while guests. He said, “There is no constitutional right to a student visa.” He added, “It is a privilege.”
Rubio’s continued insististence that the Turkish grad student had no right to a visa and that Rep. Jayapal could try to change the law if she cared that much about it caused an utter meltdown from Jayapal, who practically shouted, “Mister Secretary, because you are talking about revoking student visas based on what somebody says, and that means that you are trumping the legal Supreme Court, the supreme law of the land, which is the Constitution of the United States administration, Mr. Rubio, why did the administration need to use masked, armed, unidentified agents to with somebody off the street and deny her counsel for almost 24 hours after?”
Then, as Secretary Rubio told her, “you have to ask the agencies that did that work,” Jayapal had a further, hysteric meltdown in which she seemed on the verge of tears, snapping: “Secretary Rubio, I’m talking about this particular case where you revoked the student visa of a Turkish citizen, a Turkish citizen who was a graduate student who wrote an op-ed that you didn’t like, and suddenly you allowed for masked men to whisk her off the street. And you have multiple jobs. Apparently, you’re the National Security Adviser as well. So don’t tell me it’s not your job who snatches her off the street.”
Jayapal then started freaking out about the idea that agents involved in some of the illegal alien arrests have worn masks, and Rubio told her that the “student was a guest in the United States on a student visa.” He added that she had no right to a visa, saying, “No one’s entitled to a student visa.”
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Rubio then added that when activist students are “coming up here to stir up problems on our campus, we’re going to revoke their visa,” which led to yet another hyperventilation meltdown from Rep. Jayapal in which she seemed once again on the verge of tears as she attacked Rubio.
Having that meltdown, Jayapal practically shouted, her voice rising as she melted down, “She didn’t do any of that. She wrote an op ed. She wrote an op ed, and I’m talking to you about her particular case, Reclaiming my time. You revoked her student visa? Yes, because she wrote an op ed. Would you do more?”
The two then continued going back and forth as Rubio tried explaining the intricacies of the immigration system to the congresswoman. Watch them here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video