'Pathetic!' Sparks fly at hearing as Rubio defends attacks on student protesters

Secretary of State Marco Rubio clashed with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) over the Trump administration's attempt to deport student activists who support Palestinians.

During a Tuesday Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Van Hollen criticized Rubio and President Donald Trump for failing to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. He also slammed Rubio for wrongly deporting a Maryland man to El Salvador.

"Clearly, you don't care about the Fifth Amendment right to due process, and you don't care about the First Amendment either since you've been very busy snatching students off of college campuses for exercising their right to free speech," Van Hollen said. "You dredged up a relic from the McCarthy era to claim that student protesters posed a threat to the foreign policy of the United States."

"It's about punishing free speech," he continued. "And you know that in America, the government doesn't get to use its power to punish speech it doesn't like. Yet in March, you boasted about revoking student visas, saying, and I'm quoting, we do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa, unquote."

Van Hollen observed that one student, Tufts doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk, was targeted for co-authoring an op-ed about the war in Gaza.

"Your own department found zero links to terrorism, no anti-Semitic statements, but you still yanked her visa and shipped her off to detention in Louisiana," he explained.

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"And I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for Secretary of State," Van Hollen added.

Rubio responded: "Well, first of all, your regret for voting for me confirms I'm doing a good job based on what I know."

"That's just a flippant statement, Mr. Secretary!" Van Hollen shot back.

"The bottom line is if you're coming here to stir up trouble on our campuses, we will deny you a visa," Rubio opined. "And we're going to do more. There are more coming."

"Writing an op-ed to the school paper is disruptive to the foreign policy of the United States of America?" Van Hollen remarked. "That's pathetic!"

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