Federal Government detains international student at Tufts

An international student in a graduate program at Tufts University was taken into federal custody Tuesday outside an off-campus apartment building, according to the university’s president and an attorney representing the student.

The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen, had a valid student visa as a doctoral student at Tufts, according to a statement from her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai. Ozturk, who is Muslim, was heading out to break her Ramadan fast with friends Tuesday night when she was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, Khanbabai said.

“We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her,” the lawyer said. “No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of.”

A statement attributed to a senior spokesperson for Homeland Security claimed Wednesday that Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of” Hamas considered “grounds for visa issuance to be terminated.”

Records from Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed that a person with Ozturk’s name was being held in a Louisiana detention center Wednesday.

Late Tuesday, Judge Indira Talwani of the US District Court in Massachusetts had ordered the government not to move Ozturk out of the state without advance written notice to the court. It was not immediately clear Wednesday whether the government had provided written notice of her removal from Massachusetts.

Ozturk filed a court petition asking a judge to determine whether her detention was lawful, and it named as respondents Patricia Hyde, the acting director of the ICE field office in Boston, and other agency officials.

On Tuesday night, the president of Tufts, Sunil Kumar, wrote in an email to the university community that administrators had no prior knowledge of the plan to detain the student, and that they did not share any information with federal authorities ahead of time.

“We realize that tonight’s news will be distressing to some members of our community, particularly the members of our international community,” Kumar wrote.

Ozturk was listed as one of several authors of an opinion essay published last March in the Tufts student newspaper. The essay criticized university leaders for their response to demands that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest itself from companies with ties to Israel.

She is one of several students who have been targeted for deportation by the Trump administration. Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian citizen and doctoral student at the University of Alabama, was detained off campus by federal immigration officials, the school said in a statement Wednesday. It was not clear why the student was targeted, and US immigration officials did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday evening.

Earlier this month, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and leader of pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations who has permanent US residency, was arrested by federal immigration officers in New York. Although he has not been charged with any crime, the administration has argued that he should be deported to prevent the spread of antisemitism.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Homeland Security, said Ozturk was detained under a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which the administration is also using to try to deport Khalil.

The measure says the secretary of state can initiate deportation proceedings against any noncitizen whose presence in the United States is deemed a threat to the country’s foreign policy interests.

At Tufts, the president reminded students in his email of the university’s “established protocol for responding to government agents who arrive on campus (or off-campus) for an unannounced site visit,” which encourages them to call the university police in such situations.

A video circulating on social media Wednesday showed a woman in a hijab and white coat being surrounded on a sidewalk, handcuffed and led away by masked plainclothes officers driving unmarked cars.

The Massachusetts attorney general, Andrea Joy Campbell, said her office was “closely monitoring this matter as it develops.”

She added: “The footage of Rumeysa Ozturk’s arrest — a student here legally — is disturbing. Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views. This isn’t public safety, it’s intimidation that will, and should, be closely scrutinized in court.”

While studying psychology as an undergraduate at Istanbul Sehir University, Ozturk worked closely with one of her professors, Fatima Tuba Yaylaci, in the psychology lab and as a student assistant. Ozturk was interested in child development and how children understand concepts like death and life, the professor said.

“She is a person who wouldn’t hurt a soul,” Yaylaci said in an interview Wednesday. “She is extremely sensitive about human rights, about not hurting people, about diversity. She is a person who wants to include everyone.”

The professor said they had never discussed Palestinians during their time together, before Ozturk received a Fulbright scholarship and enrolled in a master’s program at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where she received a degree in 2020. “Her relations with people were really good, but she was not an organizational, activist-type leader in terms of politics,” Yaylaci said.

A couple of weeks ago, the professor said, she received a message from Ozturk, asking her to remove pictures of her with friends from the social media account of the lab. Ozturk told her she was being doxxed, meaning that personal information about her was being posted maliciously online.

“This is a very hard day for me too, I am very sad,” Yaylaci said. “I hope this issue will be resolved. She is such a valuable researcher for children in Turkey and in the US too.”

Canary Mission, a group that says it fights hatred of Jews on college campuses, has posted a photo of Ozturk on its website, identifying her as a student at Tufts and saying that she “engaged in anti-Israel activism in March 2024,” a possible reference to her opinion essay. Pro-Palestinian activists have said the group exposes their identities, making them targets of harassment.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Jan. 29 saying his administration would take steps to combat antisemitism, including on campuses. The order said it would be US policy to use “all available and appropriate legal tools,” including to “remove” noncitizens who engage in “unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”

“Nobody should be disappeared from the streets of Somerville — or anywhere in America,” Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said Wednesday. “The government must immediately release her to her friends and community in Massachusetts.”

Tufts’ main campus is in Medford, Massachusetts, a small city 7 miles northwest of Boston and adjacent to Somerville, where the student was detained.