Donald Trump’s administration does not appear to possess any evidence backing up claims of antisemitism and support for a terrorist organization to justify the arrest of a Tufts University doctoral student who was grabbed off the streets by masked federal agents and jailed in a Louisiana detention center.
Lawyers for Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk told a federal judge in Vermont on Monday that the government is in possession of at least one memo that says Secretary of State Marco Rubio does not have sufficient grounds to revoke her visa and order her removal.
Last year, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in a student newspaper calling on the university to divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel in an effort to hold Israel accountable “for clear violations of international law” for its campaign in Gaza.
A memo from Homeland Security officials to the State Department and first reported by The Washington Post claims Ozturk “engaged in anti-Israel activism in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023.”
That language is identical to a description of Ozturk on a website run by pro-Israel activists who are identifying students and activists who oppose Israel’s war in Gaza for law enforcement. That group later appeared to take credit for her arrest.
“Specifically,” Ozturk “co-authored an op-ed article” that “called for Tufts to ‘disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel,’” the memo said.
Another memo from the State Department asserts that Homeland Security investigators and searches of government databases have not produced any evidence that Ozturk engaged in antisemitic activity or made public statements in support of any terrorist organization.
Trump administration officials argue Ozturk can be deported under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows for a foreigner’s removal if the secretary of state has reasonable grounds to believe the person’s presence or activities has “adverse” foreign policy consequences.
The Department of Justice has not shared the memos with Ozturk’s lawyers, according to Jessie Rossman, who is among the ACLU attorneys representing Ozturk in courtrooms to challenge her arrest and removal.
Judge Sessions had also questioned attorneys on whether the government has supplied any evidence to back up its allegations.
The administration is relying on the “unlawful use of immigration law as a cudgel to punish” activists “and send a clear message to other noncitizens that if you express opinions the government disagrees with you will also be punished,” Rossman told District Judge William K. Sessions III on Monday.
“Guilt by association” by trying to tie Ozturk to other activist groups draws an “eerie comparison to what the government was trying to do during the Red Scare in the 1950s,” Rossman said.
Attorneys for Ozturk argue her arrest and detention are violations of her First and Fifth Amendment rights and are seeking her release, among a wave of challenges to similar arrests targeting international students for pro-Palestinian advocacy.
“Efforts to target me because of my op-ed in the Tufts Daily calling for the equal dignity and humanity of all people will not deter me from my commitment to advocate for the rights of youth and children,” Ozturk said in a recent statement through her attorneys
Judge Sessions suggested he could order Ozturk to be moved to Vermont from the Louisiana detention center where she has been jailed since last month, after plain-clothes federal agents approached her on the street near her apartment and transferred her to a series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.
The judge is likely to hold another hearing in May.
Ozturk is working towards her doctorate at the Eliot-Pearson Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She received her master’s degree in developmental psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University, where she was a Fulbright scholar.
She has remained inside the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile despite a court order following her arrest that she cannot be moved outside the state without at least 48 hours of advance notice to the court.
Ozturk, 30, has repeatedly experienced asthma attacks inside the facility. She wasn’t allowed to go outside during her first week at the facility, she wrote in a sworn statement to the court.
She shares a cell with 23 others, and the conditions are “unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane,” and doctors and nurses are “rude and uncaring,” she wrote. A nurse removed her hijab without asking, she wrote.
“I pray everyday for my release so I can go back to my home and community,” she wrote. “I want to return to Tufts to resume all of my cherished work.”
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