SEIU demands release of unjustly detained workers, citing political retaliation

UNI Global Union’s U.S. affiliate, SEIU, is protesting the Trump administration’s immoral detention of immigrant workers – including SEIU members.

The two-million-member union has launched protests across the country, demanding the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University graduate student and SEIU Local 509 member. Federal agents forcefully detained Ozturk, a Turkish national, in Boston last month.

SEIU President April Verrett issued a statement saying Ozturk was:

“…was snatched by masked federal immigration authorities on Tuesday night on her way to Ramadan services. Her arrest, with no charges filed, is yet another chilling example of this administration’s efforts to use immigration actions to target and silence people merely for criticizing U.S. policy in the Middle East. Ozturk, from Turkey, had a valid student visa, and her lawyer has no idea where she has been taken or why, though she had recently co-authored an op-ed in the student newspaper in support of the people of Palestine.”

The U.S. government has produced no evidence justifying Ozturk’s abduction. The Washington Post reports a leaked State Department memo that finds no wrongdoing by Ozturk and further raises concerns her arrest was politically driven.

“The U.S. Secretary of State is using the power of his office to silence a graduate student over an op-ed. It’s as chilling as it is appalling,” said UNI Global Union General Secretary Christy Hoffman. “If Rumeysa is not safe, nobody is.”

SEIU is also demanding the release of Llewellyn Dixon, a 50-year green card holder and SEIU 925 member detained since February. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested the University of Washington worker as she returned from her native Philippines.

On 1 April, SEIU projected the slogans “Free Speech, Free Workers” onto their headquarters in Washington, D.C. Several local branches, including 32BJ SEIU, also participated in actions to demand the freedom of Ozturk and Dixon from ICE custody.

The governor of Massachusetts, mayor of Boston, and groups across the political spectrum – including Jewish and Republican student organizations at Tufts – have publicly backed Ozturk’s release.

Last week, 27 U.S. Jewish organizations – including the Jewish Labor Committee, Chaired by RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum – filed a powerful amicus brief in support of Ozturk’s release, stating:

[T]he images of Öztürk’s arrest in twenty-first century Massachusetts evoke the oppressive tactics employed by the authoritarian regimes that many ancestors of amici’s members left behind in Odessa, Kishinev and Warsaw, among a great many others. To watch state authorities undermine the same fundamental rights that empowered so many Jewish Americans is chilling; to know it is being done in the name of the Jewish people is profoundly disturbing.

Take action! Support Rumeysa’s legal fund.