US immigration authorities have detained and revoked the visa of a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University near Boston who had expressed support for Palestinians in Israel’s war in Gaza.
Rumeysa Ozturk’s supporters say her detention on Tuesday night is the first known immigration arrest of a Boston-area student engaged in such activism under President Donald Trump’s administration, which has detained or sought to detain several foreign-born students in the US who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests.
Critics have condemned the arrests as an assault on free speech, while the Trump administration argues that certain protests are antisemitic and could undermine US foreign policy.
A video of the arrest showed masked and plainclothes agents taking the 30-year-old Turkish national into custody near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, as she was on her way to meet friends to break her Ramadan fast, according to her lawyer.
Tricia McLaughlin, a US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, stated in a post on X that authorities determined Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.”
“A visa is a privilege, not a right,” McLaughlin said. However, she did not specify the activities that led to the revocation of Ozturk’s F-1 student visa. Ozturk, a Fulbright Scholar, was enrolled in Tufts’ doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development.
Her arrest follows an opinion piece she co-authored a year ago in The Tufts Daily, in which she criticised the university’s response to student demands to divest from companies linked to Israel and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
Mahsa Khanbabai, Ozturk’s lawyer, suggested that her client’s detention was linked to her exercising her free speech rights, citing similar cases across the country.
Khanbabai filed a lawsuit late on Tuesday arguing that Ozturk was unlawfully detained. That night, US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to move Ozturk out of Massachusetts without at least 48 hours’ notice.
Despite the court order, Ozturk was transferred to Louisiana by Wednesday night, Khanbabai said. She called the allegations against her client “baseless” and condemned the Department of Homeland Security for “spiriting away Rumeysa in broad daylight.”
Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts described the arrest as “the latest in an alarming pattern to stifle civil liberties.” Ozturk’s detention sparked a large protest in Somerville, with demonstrators holding signs that read “Resist,” “Defend student voices,” and “Release Rumeysa Ozturk now!”
Her arrest comes amid the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on immigration, which has included ramping up arrests and tightening border restrictions.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
Follow us on:
