A federal judge ordered the immediate release of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. candidate from Tufts University, on Friday. Öztürk was detained by masked, plainclothes ICE agents in Massachusetts back in March. Video of the incident, in which six officers circled her outside of her home, handcuffed her, and whisked her into an unmarked SUV, garnered significant outrage online.
Öztürk was taken into custody a year after she co-authored an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized the university’s failure to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and demanded it “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.” She has been in detention for six weeks, despite not having been charged with a crime.
At the hearing where Öztürk’s release was ordered, Judge William Sessions said, “Her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens,” per the independent media outlet Zeteo. “There has been no evidence that has been introduced by the government other than the op-ed. I mean, that literally is the case.”
“There is no evidence here as to the motivation, absent consideration of the op-ed, so that creates unto itself a very significant [and] substantial claim that the op-ed — that is, the expression of one’s opinion as ordinarily protected by the First Amendment — form the basis of this particular detention,” Sessions continued.
At the time of her arrest, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Öztürk had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” The Washington Post later reported that DHS sought to revoke Öztürk’s visa under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows for foreigners to be deported if the secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe that their “presence or activities” could pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” DHS claimed that Öztürk “engaged in anti-Israel activism in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023.”
However, according to the Washington Post, an internal State Department memo determined that there weren’t sufficient grounds for revoking Öztürk’s visa, as she hadn’t engaged in antisemitic activities or publicly supported a terrorist organization. Nonetheless, Öztürk was detained a few days after that memo was sent out, and her visa was revoked. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time, “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.”
Like Mahmoud Khalil and Badar Khan Suri, two other foreign scholars detained by the federal government for pro-Palestinian activism, Öztürk was quickly shuttled to an immigrant detention center in Louisiana. A federal appeals court later ordered that she be transferred to Vermont, the state where she was when her lawyers filed a habeas petition that ultimately resulted in Friday’s verdict.
Speaking to Zeteo previously, Massachusetts representative Ayanna Pressley said that Öztürk was living under “harrowing” conditions in Louisiana. “She suffered several very severe asthma attacks while there, [and] received inadequate medical care,” Pressley said. “There has been no religious accommodation, in fact, not only on a dietary aspect, but when it comes to a space to pray, a Quran. Her hijab was removed without her consent by one of the nurses.”
“I am relieved and ecstatic that she has been ordered released,” Mahsa Khanbabai, Öztürk’s lawyer, said in a statement to the Cut. “Unfortunately, it is 45 days too late. She has been imprisoned all these days for simply writing an op-ed that called for human rights and dignity for the people in Palestine.”
“When did speaking up against oppression become a crime?” Khanbabai continued. “When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?”