The US immigration authorities have arrested a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University near Boston and revoked her visa, following her vocal support for Palestinians during Israel’s war in Gaza, and her lawyer has challenged the detention in federal court.
Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, was taken into custody by Department of Homeland Security agents on Tuesday night as she left her Somerville home to meet friends and break her Ramadan fast, and her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, has claimed that the detention is politically motivated.
Ozturk’s arrest is believed to be the first immigration-related detention of a Boston-area student involved in such activism under President Donald Trump’s administration, and her supporters have condemned the action as an attack on free speech.
The Trump administration has previously detained or sought to detain several foreign-born students legally residing in the United States and participating in pro-Palestinian protests, and critics argue that these actions undermine civil liberties.
However, the administration has defended the crackdown, asserting that some protests are anti-Semitic and pose a threat to US foreign policy, and US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin has accused Ozturk of supporting Hamas without providing details on specific activities.
Ozturk’s arrest came a year after she co-authored an opinion piece in Tufts Daily criticising the university’s response to student calls for divestment from companies linked to Israel, and her lawyer has stated that her public stance on Palestinian rights appears to have contributed to her detention.
Following her arrest, US District Judge Indira Talwani ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) not to transfer her out of Massachusetts without at least 48 hours' notice, yet Khanbabai later discovered that Ozturk had already been relocated to Louisiana.
Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, have criticised the arrest, describing it as part of a broader pattern of suppressing civil liberties, and activists have organised a rally in Somerville to support Ozturk. Witnesses in her neighbourhood reported that the arrest resembled a kidnapping, as officers in unmarked vehicles and covered faces forcibly took her into custody, and surveillance footage captured the incident.
Ozturk, a Fulbright Scholar in Tufts’ doctoral programme for child study and human development, has been residing in the United States on an F-1 student visa, and Tufts University has stated that it had no prior knowledge of the arrest.