“Kidnapped”: 1,000+ Protest After Masked ICE Agents Abduct Tufts Ph.D. Student Rumeysa Ozturk
Over a thousand protesters gathered near Tufts University on Wednesday after masked plainclothes immigration agents snatched Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts Ph.D. student and Fulbright scholar, from the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. Surveillance video shows agents approaching her on the streets near her home Tuesday evening and handcuffing her while she screamed for help. Tufts University’s president said the school had no prior notice of her arrest. Last March, Ozturk co-wrote a piece in the student newspaper criticizing the Tufts administration’s response to Palestinian solidarity protests on campus that were calling for divestment from Israel. Democracy Now!‘s Hany Massoud and Ariel Boone were in Somerville at Wednesday’s protest. “One of our community members was taken by armed agents of the state who kidnapped her from right outside her home,” said Lea Kayali, an activist with the Palestinian Youth Movement. “People are here to stand up for the movement that she was punished for supporting.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today in Massachusetts, where over a thousand protesters gathered near Tufts University Wednesday after masked, plainclothes immigration agents snatched Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts Ph.D. student, from the streets of Somerville. Ozturk is a doctoral student in the school’s Department of Child Study and Human Development. She’s a research assistant at Tufts’ Children’s Television Project. She’s a former Fulbright scholar who was born in Turkey.
Surveillance video from a nearby house shows agents approaching her on the streets near her home Tuesday evening. In the video, you can hear her scream as the agents move to detain her.
RUMEYSA OZTURK: [inaudible]
AMY GOODMAN: Rumeysa Ozturk was making her way with friends to a meal to break her Ramadan fast.
Tufts University’s president said the school had no prior notice of her arrest. Last March, Ozturk wrote a piece in the student newspaper criticizing Tufts’ response to Palestinian solidarity protests on campus which were calling for divestment from Israel.
Democracy Now!‘s Hany Massoud and Ariel Boone were in Somerville at Wednesday night’s protest.
FATEMA AHMAD: When immigrants are under attack, what we do?
PROTESTERS: Stand up! Fight back!
FATEMA AHMAD: When students are under attack, what we do?
PROTESTERS: Stand up! Fight back!
FATEMA AHMAD: I am Fatema Ahmad. I am executive director of Muslim Justice League. I want to start with an attorney statement. To clarify, I am not Rumeysa’s attorney, but this is a statement shared from her attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, just to start us off. “Thank you all for coming out to support Rumeysa this evening. I hope to speak with her soon, and we’ll be telling her about the outpouring of love and support. Unfortunately, I recently received word that she was transferred to Louisiana.”
PROTESTERS: Boo! Shame! Shame!
FATEMA AHMAD: “I don’t understand why it took the government nearly 24 hours from her detention to let me know her whereabouts. DHS would have been made aware of the habe filing last night. Why she was transferred to Louisiana despite the court’s order is unfathomable. Rumeysa should immediately be brought back to Massachusetts, released and allowed to return to complete her Ph.D. program. Our country is built upon a system of laws and accountability. We look forward to her having her day in court.”
PROTESTERS: Fight back!
FATEMA AHMAD: Stand up! Fight back!
PROTESTERS: Stand up! Fight back!
FATEMA AHMAD: Stand up! Fight back!
PROTESTERS: Stand up! Fight back!
NICOLE: Hello, everyone. My name is Nicole, and I am an East Somerville resident. And I am one of the volunteer coordinators of the Somerville ICE Watch Network. The city of Somerville and many other cities in Massachusetts call ourselves a sanctuary city. But what does that really mean if our neighbors are being disappeared by state violence for weeks and there’s been silence and inaction? What our community needs to know is that how horrifying this incident and Rumeysa’s kidnapping may be, this is the terror and the threats that our immigrant neighbors live under every single day.
SAM ALTERMAN: My name is Sam Alterman. I am a Ph.D. grad worker at Tufts University, and I am proud to be one of the head stewards for the Tufts University Graduate Workers Union SEIU 509. I am even more proud to call Rumeysa Ozturk a colleague, a union sibling and a friend. Our union stands shoulder to shoulder with Rumeysa, with Mahmoud Khalil and Momodou Taal and with every worker in the United States who is attacked for exercising their free speech rights. We believe that all workers, regardless of citizenship, visa status or documentation, have a right to be safe in their workplace and in their communities, to speak their minds without fear of retaliation or harassment, and to participate in civic life. One hundred years ago, during the first and second Red Scares, the federal government also attempted to shamelessly and violently abuse immigration law to chill free speech and attack working people. The labor movement fought back then, and we need to fight back now.
ARIEL BOONE: Can you say your name and who you’re with?
LEA KAYALI: Yeah, Lea Kayali, and I’m with the Palestinian Youth Movement. We had hundreds of Bostonians coming out here today because they are angered about what happens when one of our community members was taken by armed agents of the state, who kidnapped her from outside of her home. People are here to stand up for the movement that she was punished for supporting, the movement for a free Palestine and to end the genocide in Gaza. And they’re also here to continue to support our immigrant neighbors, who have been getting picked up by ICE ever since, you know, not just Trump came into office, but Biden before him and every administration. So we are out here to continue to demand a free Palestine, to demand ICE out of our communities and to fight for collective liberation.
FATEMA AHMAD: I’m Fatema Ahmad. I’m with Muslim Justice League.
ARIEL BOONE: Can you describe what happened to Rumeysa?
FATEMA AHMAD: Yes. So, as far as we understand, you know, Rumeysa was actually under surveillance maybe for a day or two by ICE agents. So, her neighbors actually reported seeing these cars parked on the street for about two days. And then, she was on her way to an iftar with her friends. And you can see very clearly in the video that, you know, these people just surround her and take her. They don’t explain who they are. There’s no indication on their — you know, no vests, nothing, no badges or anything. And so, neighbors who saw this were, of course, frightened and reported it, assuming that it was ICE. And it was ICE, in fact, that took her.
I think 9/11 and the “war on terror” was obviously a huge escalation in not just surveillance and policing, but the structure of the government — right? — creating the Department of Homeland Security, creating ICE, which are now these massive departments eating up our budgets and coming for our community members. And every step of the way, you know, many community members have spoken out and said, “We can’t accept these things. We can’t keep adding more and more surveillance, more and more policing, more and more militarization. It will eventually come for all of us.” And I think this is the moment where a lot of people realize it is coming for everybody.
AMY GOODMAN: Some of the voices from over a thousand protesters who gathered near Tufts University Wednesday evening, after masked, plainclothes immigration agents snatched Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts doctoral student, from the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts.
"She was abducted by armed agents of the state because she dared take a stand against genocide," said one supporter of Rumeysa Ozturk.
Ozturk ICE Protest Sumerville
As reports surfaced Wednesday that Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University Ph.D. student who was abducted by immigration agents off a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, had been taken to a detention center in Louisiana, thousands of people assembled in the Boston-area city to demand Ozturk’s release.
Ozturk was transferred to the South Louisiana Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center despite a court order barring immigration officials from moving her out-of-state without prior notice, and her lawyers shared a statement at Powder House Park saying they hadn’t been notified about the Turkish student’s exact whereabouts. They also said her F-1 student visa had been terminated.
Organizers wearing keffiyehs, the traditional Palestinian scarf, said Ozturk is the victim of “state-sanctioned political kidnapping”—targeted by ICE and the Trump administration for co-authoring an op-ed that criticized Tufts administrators for their “inadequate and dismissive” response to a student demand that the university divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Ozturk co-wrote the letter last March, weeks before students at Columbia University led a nationwide campus protest movement against the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Gaza, which at the time had killed more than 30,000 Palestinians—the majority of whom were civilians despite repeated claims by the U.S. and Israel that the operation was targeting Hamas.
Since then, the Gaza death toll has surged past 50,000, and the Trump administration has cracked down on international students and organizers who participated in anti-Israel protests.
“She was abducted by armed agents of the state because she dared take a stand against genocide,” said Lea Kayali of the Palestinian Youth Movement at the rally in Somerville. “And even though she may not consider herself an activist, she has more courage in the hand she wrote that article with than all of [President Donald] Trump’s cronies combined.”
As organizers noted that 370 people have been arrested in the Boston area by ICE in the last week—with officials calling some “collateral” in Trump’s mass deportation campaign—demonstrators chanted, “Free Rumeysa, free them all!” and, “Come for one, face us all!”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called Ozturk’s detention “the latest in an alarming pattern to stifle civil liberties.”
“The Trump administration is targeting students with legal status and ripping people out of their communities without due process,” said Warren. “This is an attack on our Constitution and basic freedoms—and we will push back.”
Organizers urged attendees to focus on “community building,” not just rallies, in response to ICE’s repeated abductions.
“I don’t need you to come to any more rallies. I need you to know your neighbors,” said Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Muslim Justice League. “There is no more time for these rallies and these marches where you say these things and you go home and you wait for another social media post to tell you to come here. You have to get organized.”
Later Wednesday evening, AL.comreported that ICE’s hunt for international students had reached the University of Alabama (UA). As the student-run newspaper, The Crimson White, reported, Iranian mechanical engineering doctoral student Alireza Doroudi was arrested early Tuesday morning by ICE agents. He was issued an F-1 student visa in January 2023 but had it revoked six months after he arrived in the U.S.
“After receiving the revocation notice, Alireza immediately contacted ISSS [International Student and Scholar Service] at University of Alabama,” read a message sent in a group chat including Iranian students, according to The Crimson White. “ISSS replied with confidence, stating that his case was not unusual or problematic and that he could remain in the U.S. legally as long as he maintained his student status.”
The University of Alabama Democrats said in response to Doroudi’s abduction and detention in an undisclosed location, “Our fears have come to pass.”
“Donald Trump, [border czar] Tom Homan, and ICE have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community,” the group said. “As far as we know right now, ICE is yet to provide any justification for their actions, so we are not sure if this persecution is politically motivated, as has been seen in other universities around the country.”
The targeting of foreign students at Columbia, Tufts, Georgetown, and other universities in recent weeks has led to outcry among academics, particularly as the ICE abductions have taken place alongside threats from the Trump administration to pull funding from schools for not sufficiently cracking down on alleged antisemitism on campus—which the White House has conflated with calls for Palestinian liberation and opposition to Israel’s U.S.-backed attacks.
More than 600 members of the Harvard University faculty signed a letter to the school’s governing board Wednesday warning that “ongoing attacks on American universities threaten bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and inquiry.” The faculty called on administrators to defy any orders that threaten academic freedom.
Nearly 1,400 academics have also called for a boycott of Columbia over its refusal to defend and protect students against Trump’s attacks on pro-Palestinian protesters.
“We are appalled that Columbia’s leadership has colluded with the authoritarian suppression of its students by fully capitulating to the conditions imposed by the Trump administration for the release of $400 million in grants withdrawn on March 7, and that it did so against the warning issued by constitutional law scholars that this course of action ‘creates a dangerous precedent for every recipient of federal financial assistance,'” reads a letter from supporters of the academic boycott.
Former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil remains in detention in Louisiana after being abducted by plainclothes immigration agents earlier this month for leading negotiations with Columbia regarding divestment from Israel, while Ph.D. candidate Ranjani Srinivasan fled the country after her visa was revoked and Columbia unenrolled her. Columbia also expelled Grant Miner, a Jewish student and labor leader who occupied a campus building last spring, and revoked degrees from some student protesters.
“Universities cannot pretend to hold higher education sacred while repressing students and faculty, undermining free speech and academic freedom, and prohibiting dissent,” reads the letter. “Every such act of craven suppression and compliance only further undermines the university and emboldens the reactionary forces intent on destroying it.”
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