After more than six weeks in detention, the Turkish student from Tufts University was finally released on Friday afternoon.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student, was granted bail and released after spending over a month and a half in a migrant detention center in Louisiana. Ozturk maintains that her arrest was retaliation for a co-authored opinion piece she wrote in 2023, which criticized Tufts University’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
During Friday’s hearing in Burlington, she appeared via video conference from the detention center. She expressed her simple desire to resume her studies, revealing that she had experienced several asthma attacks while in detention. “Completing my doctorate is extremely important to me,” she stated.
Federal Judge William Sessions ordered her immediate release, pending a final decision on her immigration case. He praised the student’s dedication and academic commitment: “She is a woman wholly devoted to her academic career,” he stated. “She has done nothing but attend her university and build positive, supportive connections within the community.”
A State Department memo justified the revocation of her visa by claiming that her positions could have, according to authorities, “compromised U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students” and demonstrated implicit support for “an organization designated as terrorist,” particularly through her co-authored article with a group that was later suspended from campus.
However, Judge Sessions dismissed these accusations, finding “absolutely no evidence” that Ozturk had participated in or incited any violent acts.
The doctoral student’s attorneys argued that her detention violated her freedom of expression and right to due process. The judge expressed serious concern about the broader implications of such a case, stating that it could intimidate “millions of non-citizens living in the United States” who might now fear exercising their right to free speech “for fear of being violently arrested and detained,” the judge wrote.
Her arrest, which occurred in March while she was walking on a Boston street, was captured on video showing immigration agents, their faces covered, forcefully apprehending her.
During a series of immigration enforcement operations last March, more than 370 immigrants were arrested in Boston and other major Massachusetts cities. Approximately fifty others were also apprehended this week in Boston, Worcester, Framingham, and other locations. This has caused significant distress among Massachusetts immigrant communities, who are living in constant fear.
Hospitals, schools, and other public institutions in Massachusetts report observing a substantial decrease in service utilization by immigrants, who are increasingly missing their routine appointments.
