A Tufts University international graduate student is in federal custody after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national and PhD student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was arrested outside her off-campus apartment.
“Rumeysa was heading to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast on the evening of March 25th when she was detained near her home in Somerville, MA by Department of Homeland Security [DHS] agents,” said her attorney Mahsa Khanbabai in a statement.
“We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her. No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of— We hope Rumeysa will be released immediately,” she said.
Khanbabai said Ozturk had valid F-1 visa status as a PhD student. She has filed a habeas petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts for Ozturk’s release from detention.
“Unless otherwise ordered by the Court, petitioner shall not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without first providing advance notice of the intended move,” wrote federal judge Indira Talwani in a three-page order to ICE on Tuesday night.
Talwani wrote that the judiciary doesn’t generally have jurisdiction over deportations but does have authority to “preserve the status quo,” she said in the document. The judge ordered ICE to respond to the petition by Friday and to submit a written explanation for relocating Ozturk, with court notification 48 hours before. She said the government must state a reason for why transferring is necessary.
This could refer to the mass transfer of many detainees in Plymouth’s ICE detention center to New Mexico, and occasional transfers of ICE detainees to the southern border, where it is harder for them to access legal representation far from families and attorneys.
A video shared with GBH News shows Ozturk walking down a sidewalk as several people in plain clothes with their faces covered walk nearby. A man with a hoodie approaches her, then grabs her wrists. Ozturk screams, then asks “Can I call the police?” before being told “We’re the police.”
A woman with her face covered approaches Ozturk as she’s being handcuffed, and says “We’ll show you everything.” The group then walks with Ozturk across the street, who doesn’t resist, and puts her in a black vehicle with tinted windows.
An email from Tufts President Sunil Kumar shared with GBH News notes that said the university was told that Ozturk’s visa status has been terminated, and they “seek to confirm whether that information is true.”
“The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident,” Kumar wrote, “and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event.”
The university plans to assist in connecting Ozturk with external legal resources should she need them, according to the email.
“We realize that tonight’s news will be distressing to some members of our community, particularly the members of our international community,” Kumar wrote, issuing a reminder that the university has a protocol to respond to federal government agents making “unannounced visits” on or off campus.
Grant Pinsley is a freshman student at Tufts, and received the email from Kumar. “Quite obviously it seems to be an unjust exercise of federal authority,” he said.
Pinsley said scholars from other countries should be able to come to the U.S. to study. “Then for that to be cut short because of, frankly, a politically motivated action from Trump administration that we’re seeing around the country against higher education — it’s frankly disgusting.” He said international student friends are afraid to speak out right now and fear retaliation.
Neighbors witnessed Ozturk’s detention, and tipped off a hotline for groups working to protect immigrants, including Muslim Justice League. Neighbors had seen vehicles with tinted windows for two days on the street surveilling the area.
Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Muslim Justice League, said student free speech had already been heavily police during the Biden administration.
“I think now with Trump, it’s just, you know turbocharged. In terms of using ICE using DHS to just pick off a bunch of students,” said Ahmad. “We’re extremely concerned about what this means. I know many of the international students at Tufts and other universities locally are already totally freaking out since last night about this and are unsure what they can do.”
Ahmad said Ozturk’s personal information had recently been shared by Canary Mission, a pro-Israel organization that posts personal information about activists and students who protest in favor of Palestinian freedom.
“They seem to be trying to get people, you know, sort of blacklisted from jobs by putting up these, these smears about them — that’s the one thing that we know kind of happened for her recently that maybe got attention,” Ahmad said.
After the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful U.S. resident and graduate student at Columbia, President Donald Trump warned that Khalil’s detainment would be the first “of many to come” as his administration cracks down on campus demonstrations against Israel and the war in Gaza.
Ozturk is a student in Tufts’ doctoral program for child study and human development, and had previously been publicly critical of the university’s approach to pro-Palestinian protests.
In March of last year, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in the school newspaper The Tufts Daily that called on Kumar to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.
Ozturk had recent been listed on a well-known website that claims to “document individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond.”
GBH News has reached out to ICE regarding Ozturk’s detention.
