CNN’s Jake Tapper Challenges Trump Admin to Justify Student Arrests: ‘Not Good Enough!’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper challenged the Trump administration’s vague justifications for the recent arrests of foreign students in the U.S. as “not good enough” in a Monday night takedown.

On The Lead, Tapper went after the State Department’s explanation for the detainments of Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University graduate student. Both were arrested by masked Homeland Security agents last week, sparking outrage and protests on multiple campuses.

Tapper seized on the government’s ambiguous language, given to his team in a statement, about the pair’s alleged “problematic behavior.”

The CNN anchor also revealed that his team’s attempts to get specifics from the State Department had gone nowhere.

“So what is the problematic behavior exhibited by any of these students? The State Department would give us no details,” he said.

Running back clips of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s previous statements on the arrests, Tapper kept pushing:

So the question is, where is the evidence of ‘they must abide by our laws’ – where’s the evidence that they broke laws? Secretary Rubio talked about participating in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus. Okay, for these students, where’s the evidence that they vandalized? Where’s the evidence that they harassed students? Where’s any of the evidence of any of this?

All we know is that these people were involved in protest movements, but we don’t know of any disturbing behavior. There has just been no evidence presented.

One conservative writer, Jeffrey Blair, in National Review today noted, quote, this sets a hugely dangerous precedent. Are you comfortable with immigrants being ejected for exercising basic speech rights? If there is evidence of any of these individuals engaging in lawbreaking or harassing other students or anti-Semitism or pro-Hamas, sentiments expressed, specific evidence to these individuals by all means, we welcome the Trump administration sharing it. But this idea of ‘trust me, they’ve behaved problematically’ is not good enough from this government. It’s not good enough from any government.

Tapper then directly challenged Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to bring receipts — on air or otherwise.

“If there’s evidence, come on the show, present it, email me, text me, present it… show us this evidence,” he said. “But it’s not just good enough to talk about problematic behavior. What behavior? Who? What? When?”

Watch above via CNN.