Tufts Turkish student who penned anti-Israel op-ed returns to Massachusetts after over 6 weeks detained

A Tufts University student from Turkey who was swept up in the campaign by US President Donald Trump’s administration to deport pro-Palestinian campus activists, returns to Massachusetts after spending more than six weeks in an immigration detention center in Louisiana.

Rumeysa Ozturk, who was arrested after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, tells reporters after arriving at Logan International Airport in Boston that she is excited to get back to her studies and community after a judge ordered her immediately released.

“This has been a very difficult time for me,” she says at a press conference with her lawyers and local members of Congress.

Ozturk thanks her supporters, including professors and students who have sent her letters, and urges the public not to forget about hundreds of other women still housed in the detention center.

“America is the greatest democracy in the world,” she says. “I have faith in the American system of justice.”

The 30-year-old PhD student was arrested on March 25 by masked plainclothes officers on a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts, near her home, after the US Department of State revoked her student visa.

The sole basis authorities have provided for revoking her visa was an opinion piece she co-authored in Tufts’ student newspaper criticizing the school’s response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”

Her lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union argued that her arrest and detention were unlawfully designed to punish her for speech protected by the US Constitution’s First Amendment and to chill the speech of others.

“There is no evidence here as to the motivation, absent the consideration of the op-ed,” US District Judge William K. Sessions III said during her bail hearing. He added, “There is absolutely no evidence that she has engaged in violence, or advocated violence, she has no criminal record.”

Last month, 27 Jewish groups filed an amicus brief expressing concern over Ozturk’s arrest, and Jewish students at Tufts said they did not support her detention. The government’s effort to deport her amid what they say is a crackdown on antisemitism on campus, will proceed after she is freed.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.