A Turkish university student was seen on camera being detained by ICE agents over her pro-Palestinian views.
Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, who is currently studying at Tufts University in Massachusetts, was swarmed by a group of individuals near her off-campus home on Tuesday.
According to her lawyer, Ozturk had been on her way to meet with friends for iftar, a meal to break her Ramadan fast, when she was grabbed off the street.
Footage of her being taken in shows a group of six people approaching her from angles, all of whom are masked and wearing gold identification badges.
As two men approach her she can be heard screaming out in horror, and is visibly shaking in the clip.
‘We’re the police,’ members of the group are heard saying in the video. A man is heard on camera saying, ‘Why are you hiding your faces?’
The group put in her handcuffs and grab her backpack from her before pulling her towards a black SUV parked across the street.
Her lawyer Mahsa Khanbabai said that it was agents from the Department of Homeland Security who had taken Ozturk.
Rumeysa Ozturk was swarmed by a group of individuals near her off-campus home on Tuesday
In this image taken from security camera video, Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Tufts University, is detained by Department of Homeland Security agents on a street in Sommerville, Mass., Tuesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo)
Khanbabai said: ‘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.’
Khanbabai said that Ozturk had a valid student visa as a doctoral student with Tufts officials saying they were told her visa had been terminated.
University president Sunil Kumar said in an email to faculty on Tuesday evening that the school was ‘seeking to confirm whether that information is true’.
In a statement on Wednesday, Kumar said: ‘The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event, and the location where this took place is not affiliated with Tufts University.’
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued an order on Tuesday 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 providing advance notice.
Once notice is given, Ozturk shall not be moved out of the district for at least 48 hours, Talwani wrote.
Khanbabai said that Ozturk had a valid student visa as a doctoral student with Tufts officials saying they were told her visa had been terminated
Ozturk’s detention comes after President Trump signed an order on January 29 that declared a crackdown on anti-Semitism which included university campuses
The group put in her handcuffs and grab her backpack from her before pulling her towards a black SUV parked across the street
The DHS said in a statement: ‘Rumesya Ozturk is a Turkish national and Tufts University graduate student, granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa.
‘DHS and ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization 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.’
Ozturk was one of four students last March who co-authored an op-ed piece in The Tufts Daily.
The piece criticized the university’s response to its community union Senate passing resolutions demanding that Tufts ‘acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,’ disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.
It said: ‘These resolutions were the product of meaningful debate by the Senate and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law.’
It added that the university’s response to the resolutions ‘has been wholly inadequate and dismissive of the Senate, the collective voice of the student body.’
Before attending Tufts, Ozturk graduated with a master’s degree from the Developmental Psychology program at Teachers College at Columbia University in New York, according to an alumni spotlight article in 2021.
Her focus was children´s media. She was also a 2018 Fulbright scholar at Columbia.
Ozturk’s detention comes after President Trump signed an order on January 29 that declared a crackdown on anti-Semitism which included university campuses.
Mahmoud Khalil, seen here last year, was taken into custody at his university-owned apartment by ICE agents
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued an order on Tuesday giving the government until Friday to answer why Ozturk was being detained
The order had said his administration would wield US policy to ‘remove’ aliens, who engage in ‘unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence‘.
Ozturk is the latest student to be taken in by ICE agents following the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student.
Khalil, 30, was arrested on March 8 as part of the Trump crackdown, having served as a spokesperson and negotiator for those opposed to Israel’s campaign in Gaza at the school.
The government is seeking to deport Khalil under a rarely used statute that allows for removing noncitizens who pose ‘potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States’.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed he had ‘led activities aligned to Hamas’ and that the action was taken ‘in coordination with the Department of State.’
The president accused Khalil of being ‘pro-Hamas’ and Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared the US would revoke visas and green cards of ‘Hamas supporters’.
Khalil’s supporters say his arrest is an attack on free speech, and have been staging protests in the city and across the country.
He has not been charged with a crime. He is also married to a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant.
His arrest has ignited a fierce debate over whether the Trump administration violated his First Amendment rights by detaining him and trying to deport him.
A lawyer for Khalil called the allegations ‘plainly thin’ and said the government would have to prove any omission was willful and materially important.
