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Roughly one year after masked immigration agents arrested her on the street, Turkish scholar Rümeysa Öztürk has completed her PhD program at Tufts University and is returning to her home country.
Öztürk, among several high-profile immigration cases targeting international students for their Palestinian advocacy, completed her degree in child study and human development in February.
Donald Trump’s administration reached a settlement with her attorneys on Friday to resolve what remains of her case against the government, which held her in custody for more than a month and publicly accused her of engaging in activities “in support of Hamas” for merely co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper, according to court documents.
“The time stolen from me by the U.S. government belongs not just to me, but to the children and youth I have dedicated my life to advocating for,” Öztürk said Friday.
“With them in mind, I am choosing to return home as planned to continue my career as a woman scholar without losing more time to the state-imposed violence and hostility I have experienced in the United States — all for nothing more than co-signing an op-ed advocating for Palestinian rights,” she said.
Tufts University scholar Rumeysa Ozturk returned to Turkey after completing her degree following a turbulent year in the wake of her arrest by ICE agents (REUTERS)
Öztürk co-wrote an op-ed for The Tufts Daily criticizing university leaders for dismissing students’ concerns about Israel’s war in Gaza.
Administration officials canceled her student visa and signed a warrant for her arrest in response.
Plain-clothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested her near her home in Massachusetts last March, and she was held inside an ICE detention center in Louisiana — more than 1,000 miles away — for more than six weeks.
An internal State Department memo said there was no such evidence that she “engaged in any antisemitic activity” or made “any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or antisemitism generally.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally approved Öztürk’s arrest and removal, along with four other international student activists, for their Palestinian advocacy and writings against the war in Gaza, according to government documents unsealed by a federal judge earlier this year.
“Rumeysa should never have been detained for expressing her opinions in a country that is supposed to protect freedom of speech,” said Esha Bhandari, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.
“The government’s retaliatory actions violated the Constitution, and having recourse to federal court was essential to secure her release and enable her to complete her Ph.D,” Bhandari said.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Öztürk is allowed to return to Turkey without interference by the Department of Homeland Security.
The administration has also formally reinstated her Student and Exchange Visitor Program status and admitted that she was in lawful status at all times that she was in the U.S.
“DHS is glad to see Öztürk self-deported from the U.S.,” a spokesperson for Homeland Security told The Independent. “Visas provided to foreign students to live, study and work in the United States are a privilege, not a right.”
Ozturk condemned ‘state-imposed violence and hostility’ under the Trump administration after she was held in ICE detention for six weeks and engaged in a protracted legal battle to lift threat of her removal from the country while pursuing her doctorate (AFP/Getty)
The settlement in a protracted legal battle marks the first of several cases targeting pro-Palestinian students to formally come to an end.
The Trump administration is still trying to deport Columbia University students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, two Palestinian students who are no longer in federal custody but continue to fight the government’s attempts to arrest and remove them for their campus activism.
In February, after finding no grounds to deport Öztürk and Mahdawi, Roopal Patel — the immigration court judge overseeing their cases — was fired.
“As I start the next chapter of my life, I stand firmly in solidarity with academic communities in the U.S. and elsewhere who live in fear for nothing more than their scholarship, and with other scholars punished for their courageous advocacy for Palestine,” Öztürk said Friday.
“I invite all universities to do better about listening and valuing all of their students as equal community members, rather than favoring some and silencing others,” she added. “And I invite everyone to recognize the privilege it is for any country to host international scholars, and the hole that is left in our society when that privilege is lost.”
