Video shows Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk detained by ICE on way to Ramadan iftar dinner
Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish national, is being held in Louisiana, nearly two days after she was detained by federal immigration agents in Massachusetts.
Surveillance video shows Department of Homeland Security officers arresting Ozturk Tuesday evening outside her off-campus apartment in Somerville. She was surrounded by six ICE agents as she was walking to the school's interfaith center to break the Ramadan fast at an iftar dinner with friends.
Ozturk was able to briefly speak with her lawyer by telephone from Louisiana, according to court documents filed on Thursday.
Tufts student detained by ICE
In the video, an agent is seen taking her phone out of Ozturk's hands before she is handcuffed. The officers were in plain clothes, wearing masks and driving unmarked cars. A neighbor can be heard in the recording asking, "Is this a kidnapping?"
Homeland Security has accused Ozturk of being pro-Hamas and said that her visa had been terminated. Her friends say she's being punished for co-authoring an op-ed in the Tufts Daily campus newspaper last year, calling on Tufts to "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide" and divest from Israel. There was no mention of Hamas.
Tufts University President Sunil Kumar called the video of Ozturk's arrest "disturbing" in an email to campus Wednesday night.
"We are in touch with local, state, and federal elected officials and hope that Rumeysa is provided the opportunity to avail herself of her due process rights. The university is actively working to support the Tufts community as it mobilizes its collective resources and contacts to ensure our students' safety and wellbeing," Kumar said.
Ozturk's attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, said there have been no charges filed against her client.
On Tuesday night, a federal judge had ordered law enforcement to not move Ozturk out of Massachusetts without two days' notice. But she was moved to an ICE processing center in Louisiana, more than a thousand miles away, Homeland Security said Wednesday.
Hundreds of people protested the arrest at a rally at a park near campus in Somerville Wednesday night.
Rumeysa Ozturk
Reyyan Bilge, a psychology professor at Northeastern University in Boston, is Ozturk's friend and had her as a student in Turkey. Bilge said she's known Ozturk for several years and called the accusations "baseless" and "libelous."
"It's so surreal and heartbreaking," Bilge said. "She has never mentioned Hamas, let alone being either anti-Semitic or being anti anything."
