Lawyers for the US government on Thursday argued in court in Boston that they had transferred a doctoral student at nearby Tufts University to immigration detention in Louisiana before a court had ordered that she should not be removed from Massachusetts without prior notice.
At a hearing on Thursday morning in federal court, a lawyer for the student, a Turkish national, withdrew an emergency motion filed the previous day requesting that the government produce her after she was shipped off to Louisiana. The motion and one from the government were sealed.
Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, was sent to detention in the south on Wednesday after being snatched off the street outside her home on Tuesday.
The court had ordered Ice not to move her out of the Massachusetts court district but justice department lawyers on Thursday said Ozturk’s transfer to Louisiana took place before the judge ordered her to be kept in Massachusetts.
At Thursday morning’s federal court hearing in Boston, district judge Indira Talwani issued an order giving the government until Friday to answer why Ozturk was being detained.
US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (Ice), which is part of DHS, said on Thursday that Ozturk was being held at a detention center in Basile, Louisiana, and had spoken to her lawyer. A senior DHS spokesperson also confirmed Ozturk’s detention and the termination of her student visa.
Dramatic footage had emerged on Wednesday evening of the moment US immigration officials, wearing masks and hoodies, detained the Tufts University doctoral student in Massachusetts in the street, handcuffed her and bustled her into an unmarked car.
Rumeysa Ozturk was detained on Tuesday by federal immigration agents, and on Wednesday was being held at the South Louisiana Ice processing center, according to the government’s Ice detainee locator page.
The video, taken from a security camera on a building, shows Ozturk walking along the street when she is approached by several masked figures, who forcibly take her phone and backpack and place her in handcuffs. The officials, some with badges around their neck, all have their faces covered.
After she screams, an unseen onlooker can be heard responding.
“Is this a kidnapping?” asks the bystander, who appeared to be recording the arrest, footage that later circulated on social media.
In separate security-camera footage, the agents can be heard responding: “We’re the police.”
The bystander replies: “You don’t look like it. Why are you hiding your faces?”
The transfer of Ozturk first appeared to violate a federal court order from Tuesday, which directed the DHS and Ice to give the court 48 hours’ notice before attempting to take her out of Massachusetts. But on Thursday, government lawyers said her transfer took place before the court’s order.
Tuesday’s detention is the latest in a series of arrests of students who are not accused of any crime but have been involved in pro-Palestinian activism on student campuses, in a sharp escalation of anti-immigration crackdowns and attacks on political speech by the Trump administration.
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said on Wednesday that Ozturk had been “granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa”. Without supplying any proof, the spokesperson accused her of supporting Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza and led the attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, prompting Israel’s war on Gaza.
A Tuesday message from Tufts University’s president, Sunil Kumar, said that the university “had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event”. Ozturk is pursuing her doctorate in philosophy at the university and is a Fulbright scholar.
Ozturk, 30, was detained leaving her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, on the outskirts of Boston, on her way to break her Ramadan fast with friends.
Khanbabai has now been in contact her client, the government said, after it was previously reported that she had been unable to get in touch with Ozturk.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) advocacy group said in a statement: “We unequivocally condemn the abduction of a young Muslim hijab-wearing scholar by masked federal agents in broad daylight. This alarming act of repression is a direct assault on free speech and academic freedom.”
News reports say that Ozturk had been involved in pro-Palestinian activism at Tufts. She had co-written an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper, criticizing the university’s response to Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Palestinians.
“DHS and Ice investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans. A visa is a privilege, not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security,” the spokesperson told the Guardian.
The DHS did not provide examples of Ozturk’s support of Hamas, which is designated by the US government as a terrorist organization.
“Rumeysa has been my student, colleague, friend for over a decade,” Reyyan Bilge, a friend of Ozturk, posted on X. “She does not carry a hateful bone in her body let alone being antisemitic.”
Other friends and colleagues said she was not closely involved in pro-Palestinian protests that broke out on campuses last spring. Her only known activism, they said, was co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper that amplified a vote in the student senate group calling on the university to engage with student demands to cut ties with Israel.
“To my knowledge, the only thing I know of that Rumeysa organized was a Thanksgiving potluck,” said Jennifer Hoyden, a close friend of Ozturk’s who studied with her at Columbia University’s teachers’ college in New York. “There’s a very important distinction between writing a letter supporting the student senate and taking the kind of action they’re accusing her of, which I’ve seen no evidence of.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting
