Statement on Student Abductions and Trump Administration Attacks on Free Speech

The following statement is from Margaret Cook, Vice President of the Communications Workers of America Public, Healthcare and Education Workers Sector:

Since the March 8 abduction of Mahmod Khalil—father, legal permanent resident, scholar, and union member—from the Columbia University campus for his activism and speech, the Trump Administration has seized at least seven additional international graduate students and scholars across the country. They have all participated in the peaceful protest movement against the ongoing and brutal war against Gaza and are being persecuted for their background, faith, and beliefs.

These abductions are an assault on the freedoms we value and depend on as union members. Our movement was built by workers who fought for the freedom to speak out and to engage in peaceful protest so we could pursue a better life for our families. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared his personal power to issue arrest and deportation mandates for these individuals without due process, taking us back to the days when police, acting on behalf of robber barons, used threats and violence to silence anyone who stood in their way.

We should make no mistake that these actions will target anyone the Administration deems to be problematic or undesirable, including workers who speak out in order to improve their working conditions. The Trump Administration has threatened to expand its extreme cuts to university research programs in retaliation for non-compliance with its repressive agenda, and too many university boards and administrators have chosen to collaborate rather than to defend our fundamental freedoms.

These students must be released. We must demand that campuses across this country stand up for everyone’s right to speak out, protest, and assemble. And we must continue to build and mobilize our unions in defense of one another, our colleagues, and all working people.

We must resist this authoritarian, unconstitutional attack on these students and scholars in order to uphold our democratic rights, protect speech—and stop this campaign of repression in its tracks before it spreads to every campus, including all of those at which we teach, research, study, work, and organize.

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About CWA: The Communications Workers of America represents working people in telecommunications, customer service, media, airlines, health care, public service and education, manufacturing, tech, and other fields, including tens of thousands of members on university and college campuses.

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