Who Is Rumeysa Ozturk? Turkish Student Detained By US Immigration Agents

Last Updated:March 27, 2025, 08:25 IST

Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was detained by the US immigration authorities over alleged support for Hamas, which her supporters dispute.

Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk detained by US authorities (Photos: AP)

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student, was detained by the US Department of Homeland Security agents on Tuesday. The incident happened in the town of Somerville, Massachusetts, when Ozturk had just left her house to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast, Reuters quoted her lawyer Mahsa Khanbabai as saying.

US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in a post on X alleged authorities determined Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organisation that relishes the killing of Americans."

“A visa is a privilege, not a right," McLaughlin said.

A video shared first by the Associated Press showed six people, their faces covered, taking away Ozturk’s phone as she yells and is handcuffed.

“We’re the police," members of the group are heard saying in the video.

A man is heard asking, “Why are you hiding your faces?"

Meanwhile, Ozturk filed a motion demanding authorities show lawful grounds for her detention and a judge issued a decision barring officers from removing her from Massachusetts, AFP quoted legal filings.

The student’s detention was condemned by Democratic lawmakers, including US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who said the “arrest is the latest in an alarming pattern to stifle civil liberties."

WHO IS RUMEYSA OZTURK?

Thirty-year-old Rumeysa Ozturk had voiced support for Palestinians during Israel’s war in Gaza.

She was one of the four students who wrote for the university student newspaper ‘The Tufts Daily’ in March 2024, criticising the university’s handling of student anger around Israel’s war in Gaza.

According to the newspaper, Ozturk is a doctoral candidate in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development.

She is a Fulbright Scholar, according to her LinkedIn profile, and had previously studied at Columbia University in New York.

She has been in the country on an F-1 visa, which allows living in the United States while studying, according to the lawsuit.

AP quoted some of her friends as saying that Ozturk was not otherwise closely involved in protests against Israel. However, after the ‘The Tufts Daily’ piece was published, her name, photo and work history were featured by Canary Mission, a website that says it documents people who “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses."

The op-ed was the only cited example of “anti-Israel activism" by Ozturk, according to AP.

According to many of her supporters, Ozturk’s 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.

STUDENT PROTESTS IN THE US

President Trump has targeted prestigious universities that became the epicentre of the US student protest movement sparked by Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, stripping federal funds and directing immigration officers to deport foreign student demonstrators.

At New York’s Columbia University, immigration officers detained one student, permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil whose lawyers are fighting his deportation, while a judge thwarted efforts to detain another, Yunseo Chung.

Separately, several university professors sued the Trump administration in Massachusetts Tuesday, arguing its campaign targeting foreign academics was illegal.

In addition, the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers asked a New York judge to declare Trump’s slashing of $400 million from Columbia’s budget unconstitutional and to restore the funding.

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