Following her shipment to Louisiana in spite of a prior court order prohibiting her removal from Massachusetts, the attorney for a Turkish national and Tufts University doctoral student who was detained by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filed an emergency motion on Thursday, asking the government to produce the woman.
During Thursday morning’s court session in Boston, district judge Indira Talwani first ordered the government to provide an explanation for Rumeysa Ozturk’s detention by Friday. Additionally, Talwani mandated that Ozturk not be relocated outside the Massachusetts district without a 48-hour warning period.
On Thursday, however, DHS-affiliated US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (Ice) reported that Ozturk was being held at a detention facility in Basile, Louisiana, and that it had communicated with her attorney. Ozturk’s detention and the cancellation of her student visa were also verified by a senior DHS spokesperson.
On Wednesday night, dramatic video surfaced showing the moment US immigration officers, clad in masks and sweatshirts, arrested the doctorate student from Tufts University in Massachusetts in the street, handcuffed her, and hurried her into an unmarked vehicle.
According to the government’s Ice detainee locator portal, Ozturk was taken into custody by federal immigration authorities on Tuesday and was being held at the South Louisiana Ice processing centre on Wednesday.
The footage, which was captured by a building’s security camera, shows Ozturk strolling along the street when she is confronted by multiple masked individuals who seize her phone and backpack by force and handcuff her. All of the authorities have their faces covered, and others are wearing badges around their necks.
An unseen bystander can be heard reacting after she shouts.
The spectator who seems to be filming the arrest asks, “Is this a kidnapping?” The video later went viral on social media.The agents are heard replying, “We’re the police,” on different security camera footage.
In response, the onlooker says, “You don’t look like it.” Why do you conceal your faces?
Ozturk’s transfer seemed to be in violation of a Tuesday federal court order that required Ice and the DHS to provide the court with 48 hours’ notice before seeking to remove her from Massachusetts.
Then, on Thursday morning, a federal judge ordered DHS and Ice to appear in court to answer an urgent habeas corpus plea to deliver Ozturk.
The Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdowns and attacks on political expression have sharply increased, and Tuesday’s detention is the most recent in a string of arrests of students who are not charged with any crimes but have participated in pro-Palestinian action on college campuses.
Ozturk has been “granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa,” according to a DHS spokesperson’s statement released on Wednesday. The spokesperson accused her of backing Hamas, the Islamist organisation that rules Gaza and was responsible for the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked Israel’s war on Gaza, without providing any evidence.
Ozturk has been “granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa,” according to a DHS spokesperson’s statement released on Wednesday. The spokesperson accused her of backing Hamas, the Islamist organisation that rules Gaza and was responsible for the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked Israel’s war on Gaza, without providing any evidence.
Ozturk, 30, was arrested as she was heading to break her Ramadan fast with friends from her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, which is outside of Boston.
Mahsa Khanbabai, Ozturk’s lawyer, had reportedly been unable to get in touch with her client. Khanbabai filed an urgent plea to bring Ozturk before a judge on Wednesday afternoon in order to provide evidence supporting her imprisonment.
In a statement, the advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) said: “We categorically denounce the kidnapping of a young Muslim scholar wearing a headscarf by disguised federal officials throughout the day. Free speech and academic freedom are being directly attacked by this horrifying act of tyranny.
According to news accounts, Ozturk has participated in Tufts pro-Palestinian activities. In an opinion piece she co-wrote for the Tufts student newspaper, she criticised the school’s handling of Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the Palestinian people.
The spokesperson told the Associated Press on Thursday that “DHS and [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organisation that relishes the killing of Americans. 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.” The DHS did not give specific instances of Ozturk’s support for Hamas, a group that the US government has classified as a terrorist organisation.
Reyyan Bilge, a friend of Ozturk, wrote on X, “Rumeysa has been my student, colleague, friend for over a decade. She does not carry a hateful bone in her body, let alone be antisemitic.” According to other friends and colleagues, she was not actively involved in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that took place on campuses last spring; her only known activism, they said, was co-authoring an opinion piece in a student newspaper that boosted a vote in the student senate group urging the university to listen to student demands to sever ties with Israel.
According to Jennifer Hoyden, a close friend of Ozturk’s who was a student at Columbia University’s teachers’ college in New York, “the only thing I know of that Rumeysa organised was a Thanksgiving potluck.” “Writing a letter in favour of the student senate and engaging in the behaviour they are accusing her of—of which I have seen no proof—are two very different things.”On Wednesday night, supporters are organising a rally to call for her release.
