A major labor union launched a six-figure ad campaign on Tuesday featuring Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk decrying what it called an infringement on the First Amendment.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents nearly 2 million members in the United States and Canada, is launching digital ads and projections on buildings in Washington, D.C., and other cities, according to details of the campaign shared first with The Hill.
One ad reads, “We Fight Together: Free unjustly detained union members,” and features an image of Ozturk, a Turkish national whose case has drawn national attention after a video showed her being arrested on the street by plain-clothes federal officers and taken away in an unmarked van. Ozturk is a member of SEIU Local 509.
A second ad shared with The Hill reads, “Free Speech. Free Workers. Workers are rising up to defend our 1st Amendment rights.”
The ads are being deployed on the same day that the SEIU is holding rallies in multiple cities to push back against what the labor union called an “ongoing assault on the 1st Amendment” and to demand the release of Ozturk and Lewelyn Dixon, a union member who has been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention since February. Rallies are taking place Tuesday in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston and Seattle.
Trump administration officials have repeatedly defended the detention of Ozturk and others, arguing those individuals were in the United States on visas and the government has a right to revoke their visas.
“If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we are not going to give you a visa,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
It is known Ozturk wrote an op-ed for her newspaper defending Palestine last year, but her protest activities or specifics around what actions led to her arrest are unclear.
