Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national, was abducted by masked plainclothes federal agents near her off-campus apartment building in Somerville, Massachusetts.
In a letter to the Tufts community, Tufts University president Sunil Kumar wrote Tuesday night:
We have received reports that an international graduate student was taken into custody this evening by federal authorities outside an off-campus apartment building in Somerville. The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event, and the location where this took place is not affiliated with Tufts University.
According to WCVB, Ozturk's attorney says that she was maintaining valid F-1 visa status, which allows you to live in the U.S. as a full-time student.
Ozturk was a co-author of a March 24, 2024 Op-ed in The Tufts Daily, in which the authors criticized the university for failing to acknowledge Palestinian genocide and failing to divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.
Kumar wrote:
From what we have been told subsequently, the student's visa has been terminated, and we seek to confirm whether that information is true.
This was confirmed by a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson who stated without evidence that Ozturk's visa had been revoked because she supports Hamas. Link to an article in The Guardian is here.
In a statement to the Guardian, a DHS spokesperson said on Wednesday that Ozturk had been "granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa" and, without supplying any proof, accused her of supporting Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza and led the attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, prompting a massive military response from Israel.
"DHS and Ice investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans," the DHS spokesperson told the Guardian. "A visa is a privilege, not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security."
If publicly disagreeing with the policies of Israel can be deemed "an activity in support of Hamas" and grounds for abduction, then the United States has truly become a police state with no freedom of speech.
Despite a habeas petition granted by a federal judge prohibiting Ozturk's removal from Massachusetts without notice to the court, Ozturk was apparently moved to a facility in Louisiana. From The Guardian:
Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student in Boston detained on Tuesday by federal immigration agents in response to her pro-Palestinian activism, was on Wednesday evening being detained at the South Louisiana Ice processing center, according to the government's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainee locator page.
The transfer of Ozturk, a PhD student at Tufts University, appeared to violate a federal court order from Tuesday, which directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice to give the court 48 hours' notice before attempting to take her out of Massachusetts.
After Ozturk's transfer to Louisiana emerged from the online locator, the federal judge ordered DHS and Ice to respond to an emergency request in court on Wednesday to produce Ozturk by 9am ET on Thursday.
