‘Looked like a kidnapping’: Student’s arrest in Trump crackdown caught on camera

Boston: A Turkish doctoral student who once co-authored an opinion piece about Palestinians in Gaza has been taken into custody and her visa terminated in scenes captured on video that one supporter said amounted to a political kidnapping.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Tufts University, was walking on Tuesday evening to meet her friends for iftar – a meal that breaks that fast at sunset during Ramadan – when she was surprised by agents from the Department of Homeland Security. They arrested her on the footpath near her home in Somerville, a university town north of Boston.

In this image taken from security footage, Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Tufts University, is detained by Department of Homeland Security agents on a street in Sommerville, Massachusetts.Credit: AP

Supporters say Ozturk’s detention is the first known immigration arrest of a Boston-area student engaged in Palestinian activism to be carried out by President Donald Trump’s administration. It has detained or sought to detain several foreign-born students who are legally in the United States. The Trump administration argues that certain protests are antisemitic and can undermine US foreign policy.

Ozturk was one of four students who co-authored an op-ed piece in The Tufts Daily a year ago, criticising the university for its response to resolutions passed by its community union body, which demanded Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide”, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.

Friends said Ozturk was not closely involved in protests against Israel. But after the opinion piece was published, her name, photograph and work history were featured by Canary Mission, a website that says it documents people who “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses”. The opinion piece was the only cited example of “anti-Israel activism” by Ozturk.

Her detention and visa cancellation have been condemned as an assault on free speech and her supporters rallied in Somerville on Wednesday, demanding Ozturk’s release.

“We need to call what happened to Rumeysa what it is: state-sanctioned political kidnapping,” one said, according to US broadcaster NBC.

Surveillance footage obtained by The Associated Press of Ozturk’s arrest appears to show six people, their faces covered, taking away Ozturk’s phone as she yells and is handcuffed. “We’re the police,” members of the group are heard saying in the video.

A man is heard asking, “Why are you hiding your faces?”

Ozturk’s lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, said her client had a visa allowing her to study in the United States.

“We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her. No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of,” she said.

‘This isn’t public safety, it’s intimidation’

Neighbours said they were left rattled by the arrest, which played out at 5.30pm on a residential block.

“It looked like a kidnapping,” said Michael Mathis, a 32-year-old software engineer whose surveillance camera captured the arrest. “They approach her and start grabbing her with their faces covered. They’re covering their faces. They’re in unmarked vehicles.”

Tufts University president Sunil Kumar said in a statement that the school received reports that federal authorities had detained an international graduate student and that the student’s visa had been terminated.

“The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event,” Kumar said. He did not name the student, but university spokesperson Patrick Collins confirmed that Ozturk is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Democratic Congress member Ayanna Pressley called the arrest “a horrifying violation of Rumeysa’s constitutional rights to due process and free speech”.

“She must be immediately released,” Pressley said in a statement. “We won’t stand by while the Trump administration continues to abduct students with legal status and attack our fundamental freedoms.”

Massachusetts Attorney-General Andrea Joy Campbell called the video “disturbing”.

Hundreds of people gather in Somerville to demand the release of Rumeysa OzturkCredit: AP

“Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views,” she said. “This isn’t public safety, it’s intimidation that will, and should, be closely scrutinised in court.”

US District Judge Indira Talwani issued an order giving the government until Friday to answer why Ozturk was being detained. Talwani also ordered that Ozturk not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice.

But as of Wednesday evening, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) online detainee locator system listed her as being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Centre in Basile, Louisiana.

A senior DHS spokesperson confirmed Ozturk’s detention and the termination of her visa.

“DHS and ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organisation that relishes the killing of Americans. A visa is a privilege, not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security,” the spokesperson told the AP.

‘She’s never spoken badly to anyone’

Students and faculty members elsewhere also have recently had visas revoked or been blocked from entering the US because they attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians. President Donald Trump’s administration has cited a seldom-invoked legal statute that authorises the secretary of state to revoke visas of non-citizens who could be considered a threat to foreign policy interests.

Hundreds of people rallied in a Somerville park to support Ozturk on Wednesday, with speaker after speaker demanding her release and accusing both major political parties of failing to protect immigrants and stand up for Palestinians.

“Free Rumeysa Ozturk now,” the crowd chanted, along with traditional protest slogans such as “Free, free Palestine”. Many held Palestinian flags and homemade signs supporting her and opposing ICE.

Before attending Tufts, Ozturk graduated with a master’s degree from the developmental psychology program at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, according to an alumni spotlight article in 2021.

Reyyan Bilge, a psychology professor at Northeastern University and a friend of Ozturk’s, described her as a “soft-spoken, kind and gentle soul” who is deeply focused on her research and not closely involved in the campus protests.

The two first met at Istanbul Sehir University, where Bilge supervised her thesis, before working together on cognitive research and co-publishing papers. They remained close after Ozturk arrived in the United States to continue her studies on a Fulbright Scholarship at Columbia in 2018.

“Over the 10 years I’ve known her, she’s never spoken badly to anyone else, let alone being antisemitic or racist,” Bilge said.

AP with Reuters

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