A Turkish student at Tufts University was detained by ICE agents in Boston on Tuesday night and has had no contact with her lawyer, who said he doesn’t know where she is.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student, was walking down a residential street near her off-campus apartment when six plainclothes federal agents approached her, handcuffed her and hauled her away, according to surveillance video shared by local ABC affiliate WCVB.
“It looked like a kidnapping,” Michael Mathis, whose surveillance camera captured the arrest, told The Associated Press. “They approach her and start grabbing her with their faces covered. They’re covering their faces. They’re in unmarked vehicles.”
Ozturk’s attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, said he has had no contact with her since her arrest and received no explanation for the surprise detainment. Ozturk is a Turkish citizen studying in the U.S. on a student visa and has studied at Tufts since 2020, according to her LinkedIn.
The federal government, including ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, has not commented on Ozturk’s arrest. Tufts President Sunil Kumar said Wednesday the school received reports of an international student’s visa being terminated but did not name the student.
The arrest of Ozturk has many parallels to the detainment of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil in New York. Following Khalil’s arrest, which is still being fought in court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on CBS, “We’re going to keep doing it.”
President Trump’s administration has also publicly sought to track down a Columbia undergraduate student, Yunseo Chung, whose lawyers have fought their efforts. Chung has not been arrested.
In this image taken from security camera video, Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Tufts University, is detained by Department of Homeland Security agents on a street in Sommerville, Mass., Tuesday. (AP)
Khalil, Chung and Ozturk all participated in public pro-Palestinian actions. In Ozturk’s case, she wrote an opinion article in Tufts’ student paper criticizing the university’s refusal to recognize Palestinian support from its own students and faculty.
“Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide,” the article read. Ozturk was one of four authors listed on the piece.
A federal judge in Boston gave the government until Friday to explain Ozturk’s detention and ordered she remain in Massachusetts until at least that time.
With News Wire Services
