Turkish student at Tufts University in US detained by ‘masked’ federal agents

A 30-year-old Turkish national who is a doctoral student at Tufts University in the US has been detained by federal agents without explanation, her lawyer said on Wednesday (March 26).

Rumeysa Ozturk had just left her home in Somerville to meet with friends on Tuesday night (March 25) when she was detained by US Department of Homeland Security agents, lawyer Mahsa Khanbabai said in a petition filed in Boston federal court.

Surveillance video obtained by The Associated Press appears to show six people, their faces covered, taking away Ozturk's phone as she yelled and was handcuffed.

“We're the police,” members of the group are heard saying in the video.

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A man is heard on camera saying, “Why are you hiding your faces?”

Khanbabai said that Ozturk was meeting friends for iftar, a meal that breaks a fast at sunset during Ramadan.

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

Ozturk has a visa allowing her to study in the United States, Khanbabai said.

Neighbours rattled by arrest

Neighbours said they were left rattled by the arrest, which played out at 5.30 pm on a residential block.

“It looked like a kidnapping,” said Michael Mathis, a 32-year-old software engineer whose surveillance camera picked up the footage of the arrest. “They approach her and start grabbing her, with their faces covered. They're covering their faces. They're in unmarked vehicles.”

Tufts University President Sunil Kumar sent out a statement early Wednesday saying the school had received reports that federal authorities had taken an international graduate student into custody and that the student's visa had been terminated.

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“The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event,” Kumar said.

Kumar did not name the student, but Tufts University spokesperson Patrick Collins confirmed that Ozturk is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Messages sent to spokespeople for DHS and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency were not immediately returned on Wednesday.

Judge issues order

US District Judge Indira Talwani issued an order on Tuesday giving the government until Friday (March 28) to answer why Ozturk was being detained. Talwani also ordered that Ozturk not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without providing advance notice.

“Once notice is given, Ozturk shall not be moved out of the district for at least 48 hours,” Talwani wrote.

Criticised university

Ozturk was one of four students last March who co-authored an op-ed piece in The Tufts Daily, criticising the university's response to its community union Senate passing resolutions demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” 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,” the op-ed said.

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It added that the university's response to the resolutions “has been wholly inadequate and dismissive of the Senate, the collective voice of the student body.”

Students and faculty elsewhere have also recently had visas revoked or were blocked from entering the US because they attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians. President Donald Trump 's administration has been citing a seldom-invoked legal statute that authorises the secretary of state to revoke visas of noncitizens who could be considered a threat to US foreign-policy interests.

‘Kind and gentle soul’

Before attending Tufts, Ozturk graduated with a master's degree from the Developmental Psychology programme at Teachers College at Columbia University in New York, according to an alumni spotlight article in 2021. Her focus was children's media. She was also a 2018 Fulbright scholar at Columbia.

Reyyan Bilge, a psychology professor at Northeastern University and friend of Ozturk, described her as a “soft-spoken, kind and gentle soul” who is deeply focussed on her research and not closely involved in the campus protests.

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“She's really interested in developmental aspects of cognition and its overlap with children's media,” Bilge said. “She's not an activist person.”

The pair first met at Istanbul Sehir University, where Bilge supervised her thesis, before working together on cognitive research and co-publishing papers. They remained close once Ozturk arrived in the United States to continue her studies on the Fulbright Scholarship.

“Over the 10 years I've known her, she's never spoken badly to anyone else, let alone being antisemitic or racist,” Bilge said.

(With inputs from agencies)