BOSTON (Reuters) – A Tufts University student from Turkey, who was arrested last week in Massachusetts by U.S. immigration officials after advocating for Palestinians amid Israel’s war in Gaza, said on Thursday that she would not be deterred.
A lawyer for Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, read a statement on her behalf to reporters assembled outside the federal court in Boston shortly after a judge heard arguments over whether a lawsuit challenging her detention could remain in Massachusetts even though she is now being detained in Louisiana.
Ozturk’s arrest by masked agents on a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville was captured in a viral video that has turned her case into a high-profile example of Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian activists on U.S. campuses.
The Trump administration has threatened to cut federal funding to universities over pro-Palestinian protests that it describes as antisemitic, sympathetic to Hamas and a foreign policy threat.
Ozturk’s lawyers say the arrest violated her free speech rights and was based on an opinion piece she co-authored in the university’s student newspaper that criticized Tufts’ response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
Ozturk, a PhD student and Fulbright Scholar, in a statement read by her attorney Mahsa Khanbabai said that “writing is one of the most peaceful ways of addressing systemic inequality.”
“Efforts to target me because of my op-ed in the Tufts Daily calling for the equal dignity and humanity of all people will not deter me from my commitment to advocate for the rights of youth and children,” she said.
Her attorneys in court pushed U.S. District Judge Denise Casper to reject the Trump administration’s arguments that any legal challenge over her detention can only proceed in Louisiana.
Adriana Lafaille, a lawyer for Ozturk with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said she was only in Louisiana because the government was trying to steer the case out of New England by “whisking away the petitioner to its forum of choice.”
Soon after Ozturk’s arrest on March 25, one of her lawyers sued and secured a court order requiring her to not be removed from Massachusetts without 48 hours notice.
Yet unbeknownst to anyone, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was in the midst of driving her through Vermont. Upon learning of the court order, Lafaille said the administration could have returned her to Massachusetts yet instead plowed ahead with flying her to Louisiana the next day.
“The route taken was to ignore the order and not disclose her location to counsel,” Lafaille told U.S. District Judge Denise Casper.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Sauter denied any attempt to manipulate jurisdiction by moving Ozturk to Louisiana, where court rulings are reviewed on appeal by 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered by many to be the most conservative appeals court.
Instead, he said the move was driven by a lack of facilities in Massachusetts to house female detainees.
Casper pushed back on that assertion, citing evidence from Ozturk’s lawyers showing the “timing of these moves is not routine and common.”
Casper, who has temporarily blocked Ozturk’s deportation, did not immediately rule. But she prodded Sauter on whether the case could be alternatively heard in Vermont, where Ozturk was when the case was docketed.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)
By Nate Raymond
