Community members in the sanctuary city of Somerville and a lawyer representing the Tufts PhD student who was detained by federal authorities are demanding that she be returned to Massachusetts.
30-year-old Rumeysa Ozturk was quickly flown to a detention facility in Basile, Louisiana, despite a previous court order that she should not be removed from Massachusetts.
Assistant US Attorney Mark Sauter said Thursday that the move did not violate a court order because Immigration and Customs Enforcement relocated her before it was issued.
Immigration advocates say ICE has a history of transferring detainees to other states where it’s harder for them to access legal representation.
Court documents obtained by Boston 25 News show that the feds have committed to providing a more complete timeline of the arrest and transfer by Friday.
That’s when a complete response is due in US District Court in Boston.
“Thinking that could happen to me or anyone else. It’s really hard to grasp the reality of it,” said Tufts International Student Stacey Brie. “It’s just insane.”
Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar from Turkey, has been public about her pro-Palestinian support and co-authored an Op-Ed in Tufts student newspaper calling on the school’s president to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide”.
“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,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Boston 25 News on Wednesday.
The DHS did not provide specific examples of Ozturk’s support of Hamas, which is designated by the US government as a terrorist organization.
The Trump administration has vowed to deport non-citizen pro-Palestinian activists whom it accuses of engaging in antisemitic or illegal protests.
That campaign is part of Trump’s wider crackdown on elite universities.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood behind the immediate termination of Ozturk’s visa.
“If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa,” Rubio said.
Rubio said his department may have revoked more than 300 visas.
“If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States, and with that visa, participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa. And once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States,” he added. “And we have a right, like every country in the world has a right, to remove you from our country. So, it’s just that simple.”
Somerville is part of a joint federal lawsuit filed with Chelsea to protect the city’s constitutional right to not participate in federal civil immigration enforcement.
Democratic US Rep. Stephen Lynch blasted the actions of federal authorities in a post on social media Thursday.
“Snatching an international student off our streets who is lawfully in our Country and attending one of our Universities and then bundling her off to an ICE detention center 1,700 miles away without a hearing is a sickening reminder of the Gestapo-like conduct from another age,” the South Boston congressman wrote.
The Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the detainment that’s captured national attention.
“We unequivocally condemn the abduction of a young Muslim hijab-wearing scholar by masked federal agents in broad daylight,” CAIR-MA Executive Director Tahirah Amatul-Wadud said in a statement. “This alarming act of repression is a direct assault on free speech and academic freedom.”
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