Free Speech Under Attack, Says Lawyer For Tufts Student Scooped Up By ICE

A lawyer for the Tufts University student detained on a Massachusetts street by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers said she appeared to be targeted solely for exercising her right to free speech.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national working on her Ph.D., penned an opinion piece for The Tufts Daily last March with three others calling on the school’s president to engage with pro-Palestinian protesters and divest from companies with ties to Israel, much like students nationwide have been encouraging their institutions to do.

Ozturk was arrested Tuesday by plainclothes officers as she walked to meet friends to break her Ramadan fast, attorney Mahsa Khanbabai said Thursday. Her visa had been abruptly rescinded.

“This appears to be a pattern: ICE stalking Muslim students as they are heading to or from iftar to break their fast,” Khanbabai said. Iftar is the fast-breaking meal eaten after sunset during Ramadan.

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate detained earlier this month for his role in pro-Palestinian student protests, was arrested in a similar manner as the Trump administration continues its war against Palestine supporters who are not U.S. citizens.

Both Ozturk and Khalil were swiftly flown to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, where government lawyers want challenges to their cases to be heard. District courts in Louisiana are appealed through the notoriously right-wing Fifth Circuit.

Khanbabai said it took many hours for her to reach her client, who is also a Fulbright scholar. Lawyers for the government say they transferred her before a federal judge’s late Tuesday night order to provide written documentation if they moved her outside the state of Massachusetts.

“I had the opportunity to speak with Rumeysa late Wednesday night and she was grateful to finally get an explanation of what was happening to her and to learn of all the community support she has,” she said.

Video Ozturk’s arrest, from multiple perspectives, surfaced soon after she was taken. One video appears to have been filmed from a window overlooking the street where Ozturk was walking. A man quickly approaches her dressed in dark clothing with his hood pulled over his head and begins to restrain Ozturk, who seems to react with alarm as other officers surround her. She is then led away, into an unmarked vehicle, with her hands tied behind her back.

“This video should shake everyone to their core,” Khanbabai said.

“Rumeysa, like all of us in America, is entitled to express her opinions freely. Now, she is being unlawfully targeted by the Trump administration simply because she co-authored an op-ed calling for Palestinians to have basic human rights,” she added.