US authorities detain Turkish PhD student at Tufts who called for university to divest from Israel

US federal immigration authorities detained a PhD student from Turkey studying at Tufts University near Boston late Tuesday and have revoked her visa, according to the university and her attorney.

The Turkish national, Rumeysa Ozturk, was taken into custody near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, according to her lawyer, who filed a lawsuit in Boston federal court arguing she had been unlawfully detained.

US District Judge Indira Talwani, in response to that lawsuit, orders US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to not move Ozturk out of Massachusetts without first providing advance notice and to keep her in the state for at least 48 hours after.

Representatives for the US Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted international students as it seeks to crack down on immigration, including ramping up immigration arrests and sharply restricting border crossings.

Trump and his top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in particular, have pledged to deport foreign pro-Palestinian protesters, accusing them of supporting Hamas terrorists, posing hurdles for US foreign policy, and being antisemitic.

Ozturk, 30, is a Fulbright Scholar and student in Tufts’ doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development, according to her LinkedIn, and had previously studied at Columbia University in New York.

Last year, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in the university’s student paper, the Tufts Daily, that criticized the school’s response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”

She is in the country on an F-1 visa, which allows a student to live in the United States while studying, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, and was detained while “heading to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast.”

“Based on patterns we are seeing across the country, her exercising her free speech rights appear to have played a role in her detention,” Khanbabai says.