Video showing the arrest of a Turkish graduate student in Massachusetts who has supported anti-Israel causes has gone viral and drawn condemnation from immigration groups that said it smacked of authoritarianism.
Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested Tuesday near her residence at Tufts University and swiftly transported to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Louisiana.
A federal judge had ordered that she be kept in Massachusetts but it appears she’d been transferred before that order came down.
U.S. officials say she engaged in “support of Hamas” and her student visa has been revoked, making her a deportation target.
But friends told The Associated Press that she wasn’t a major player in pro-Palestinian protests.
“The only thing I know of that Rumeysa organized was a Thanksgiving potluck,” said Jennifer Hoyden, a close friend who studied with Ms. Ozturk at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “There’s a very important distinction between writing a letter supporting the student Senate and taking the kind of action they’re accusing her of, which I’ve seen no evidence of.”
Ms. Ozturk did sign onto an op-ed in the student newspaper last year demanding Tufts cut ties to Israel.
Several videos of the arrest have been posted on social media, with viewers complaining that the arresting officers pulled up masks to hide their identities.
“We’re the police,” one officer told her.
“Why are you hiding your faces,” one bystander who recorded the encounter said. He is heard suggesting the arrest was “a kidnapping.”
Ms. Ozturk was driven off in the back of an SUV.
The arrest videos have drawn millions of views on social media, and complaints from activist groups.
“We unequivocally condemn the abduction of a young Muslim hijab-wearing scholar by masked federal agents in broad daylight,” said Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “This alarming act of repression is a direct assault on free speech and academic freedom.”
Tufts students held a rally Wednesday night to protest Ms. Ozturk’s arrest — and to express anger at what they saw as the school’s weak resistance to President Trump’s aggressive immigration policy.
“We are not here just because of the last two months. We are here because progressives — time and time again — you cede ground,” one activist said, according to the Tufts Daily. “Ask yourself, ‘What are you going to do about it? How are you going to show up for your community? For your immigrant neighbors? For the students who have fearlessly fought for Palestine for almost two years now?’”
