On Friday, May 9, pro-Palestine Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was released on bail from a Louisiana detention center following an order by a US federal judge in Vermont. Ozturk has been detained by US immigration authorities since March 25, when she was essentially abducted by plainclothes ICE agents while walking through her neighborhood in Somerville, Massachusetts. The Tufts University PhD student has been languishing in a Louisiana ICE detention facility ever since.
Upon release, Ozturk was welcomed by a crowd of supporters, including members of her union, SEIU. Ozturk addressed the crowd and thanked them for their support.
Deportation over an op-ed: the rationale of the Trump administration
After the video of Ozturk’s chilling arrest went viral, it was revealed that the basis for her visa revocation and deportation by the Trump administration was over an op-ed article that she had authored in the Tufts University student newspaper. Senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Andre Watson had sent a memo to the State Department recommending her detention claiming that she had “engaged in anti-Israel activism in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023.” It specified that she had “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.’”
According to a report in the Washington Post however, an office in the State Department produced a memo stating that they had not found enough evidence to back up the DHS allegations. Washington Post reporter John Hudson wrote that the memo outlined that “while Ozturk had protested Tufts’ relationship with Israel, neither DHS nor ICE nor Homeland Security investigations produced any evidence showing that Ozturk has engaged in antisemitic activity or made public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization.”
In her Vermont hearing on Friday, Federal Judge William Sessions stated: “Her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens…There has been no evidence that has been introduced by the government other than the op-ed. I mean, that literally is the case.”
The Trump administration quickly responded to Sessions’ ruling by doubling down on its threats against Ozturk. On Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the news of Sessions’ decision, saying that “we’ve made quite clear lower level judges should not be dictating the foreign policy of the United States and we absolutely believe that the president and the Department of Homeland Security are well within their legal rights to deport illegal immigrants.”
“As for visa revocations the secretary of state has the right to do that as well. It is a privilege not a right to come to this country on a visa,” Leavitt continued.
April Verrett, the President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), issued a statement in response to the judge’s order of Ozturk’s release. “Our work is far from over,” Verrett said in a video posted on X, referring to the many immigrants currently detained by ICE. “Our work is not done until everyone who calls this country home gets to live with freedom and dignity and respect.”
