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Rumeysa Ozturk, of Tufts is in ICE custody, here's what to know [1]

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Date: 2025-03-26

Here’s what we know so far about the arrest of Ozturk, the latest international student on a US campus detained by the government amid a growing crackdown on immigration and institutions of higher education.

Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national, was detained by federal immigration authorities late Tuesday, according to her attorney and activists.

Ozturk, 30, is a student at Tufts’s doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development and is in the US on a student visa.

The LinkedIn profile says that Ozturk is a Fulbright Scholar who’d been studying at Tufts since 2021, and had previously worked as a research assistant at Boston University in 2016. Ozturk was working as graduate research assistant, her LinkedIn says, at the time of her arrest.

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Reyyan Bilge, an assistant teaching professor in psychology at Northeastern University, told the Globe she has known Ozturk for more than a decade since Bilge taught Ozturk at Şehir University in Istanbul. Ozturk came to the United States to get her master’s degree at Columbia as a Fulbright scholar, Bilge said.

She graduated in 2020 from the developmental psychology program at Columbia Teacher’s College, according to a 2021 social media post by the school.

Bilge described Ozturk as soft-spoken and kind. “If you were to actually have a chat with her for about five minutes, you would understand how kind and how decent a person she is,” she said.

What were the circumstances of her arrest?

In a statement provided through her attorney, community activists said Ozturk was “ambushed” by ICE agents on the way to an Iftar dinner with friends after leaving her Somerville apartment. Neighbors reported that unmarked cars had allegedly been surveilling the location for two days before apprehending her on the street, the statement said.

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Ozturk’s arrest took place slightly after 5 p.m. Tuesday on Mason Street in Somerville near Tufts, according to a resident who witnessed the arrest as well as security camera footage obtained by the Globe.

The witness said he saw a woman screaming outside a house. Half a dozen officers in plainclothes and wearing masks surrounded her, he said. As they handcuffed her, she cried and said, “OK, OK, but I’m a student,” he recalled.

Video footage showed plainclothes officers handcuffing Ozturk and escorting her into an unmarked SUV with tinted windows as she pleaded for explanations.

She was transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana, according to federal immigration records and the student’s attorney, despite a federal judge ordering US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday night not to remove Ozturk from Massachusetts without prior notice.

“I don’t understand why it took the government nearly 24 hours to let me know her whereabouts,” her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, said. “Why she was transferred to Louisiana despite the court’s order is beyond me.”

Tufts University president Sunil Kumar said in a statement the university “had no pre-knowledge” of the arrest and did not share information with authorities. He added that the location of the arrest was not affiliated with the university.

The university was told Ozturk’s visa status was “terminated,” but Kumar said in the statement the school was seeking more information.

Why was Ozturk taken into custody?

It was unclear why the government targeted Ozturk. She had voiced support for the pro-Palestinian movement at Tufts, but was not known as a prominent leader. Her lawyer said she is not aware of any charges against her.

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A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security asserted Ozturk “engaged in support of Hamas,” a US-designated terror group behind the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that led to Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza.

The agency did not provide evidence of that claim.

Ozturk’s attorney said her photo and other identifying information were recently posted on Canary Mission, a website that documents individuals and organizations it views as antisemitic. Pro-Palestinian protesters say the site has doxxed and targeted them.

Earlier this month, immigration officials arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student and legal permanent resident, over his role in student demonstrations at Columbia University last year. Another Columbia student fled her on-campus apartment for Canada after abruptly learning her visa had been revoked. And a doctor at Brown University’s medical school was deported after arriving at Logan International Airport, despite a court ordering her held in Massachusetts.

Has Ozturk spoken out about the war in Gaza?

Yes.

Last year, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts Daily, the university’s student paper, criticizing the university’s response to the Pro-Palestinian movement and efforts by members of the student body to sever the university’s ties to Israel.

The opinion piece cited what Ozturk and her three coauthors called “accusations against Israel [that] include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide."

When is Ozturk scheduled to appear in court?

That’s unclear.

A federal judge has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to respond by 9 a.m. Thursday to an emergency request by Ozturk’s attorney to return her to Massachusetts, records show.

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Judge Denise J. Casper issued the one sentence order on Wednesday in response to the “emergency motion to produce” Ozturk filed by her attorney in US District Court in Boston, records show.

In a three-page order issued on Tuesday, US District Court Judge Indira Talwani had ordered ICE not to remove Ozturk from Massachusetts without prior notice.

Ozturk “shall not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without first providing advance notice of the intended move,” the judge’s order read.

Talwani also ordered ICE to submit a written explanation for relocating Ozturk and notify the court 48 hours before any effort takes place to allow the judge time to review the added information. ICE “shall state the reason why the government believes that such a movement is necessary and should not be stayed pending further court proceedings,” the order says.

Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.

Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected]. Emily Sweeney can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.

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[1] Url: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/26/metro/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-ice-arrested/

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