US detains Turkish student who voiced support for Palestinians
US immigration authorities have detained a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University near Boston, Massachusetts, who voiced support for Palestinians during Israel’s war on Gaza and have revoked her visa.
Rumeysa Ozturk’s supporters say her detention is the first known immigration arrest of a Boston-area student engaged in such activism to be carried out by President Donald Trump’s administration, which has detained or sought to detain several foreign-born students who are legally in the US and have been involved in pro-Palestinian protests.
The 30-year-old Turkish national was taken into custody near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Tuesday evening while she was heading to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai.
US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a post on X that authorities determined Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.”
Ozturk co-authored an opinion piece in the school’s student paper, the Tufts Daily, that criticised Tufts’ response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide”.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tufts-says-international-student-taken-into-us-custody-visa-revoked-2025-03-26/
This is the whole article in Tufts daily this is about
https://www.tuftsdaily.com/search?a=1&o=date&ty=article&au=Rumeysa+Ozturk
Op-ed: Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions
On March 4, the Tufts Community Union Senate passed 3 out of 4 resolutions demanding that the University acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel. These resolutions were the product of meaningful debate by the Senate and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law. Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.
We urge President Kumar and the Tufts administration to meaningfully engage with and actualize the resolutions passed by the Senate.
This op-ed was written by Nick Ambeliotis (CEE, ‘25), Fatima Rahman (STEM Education, ‘27), Genesis Perez (English, ‘27) and Rumeysa Ozturk (CSHD, ‘25) and is endorsed by 32 other Tufts School of Engineering and Arts and Sciences Graduate Students.
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