WATCH: The Moment Masked ICE Agents Arrested Tufts Graduate Student Who Spoke Out in Support of Palestine

“I can buy that badge from a fucking costume store,” says a witness to the “kidnapping” of Rumeysa Ozturk as she was on her way to break her Ramadan fast.

On Tuesday evening, plainclothes-masked Department of Homeland Security agents arrested Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national with a valid student visa, as she was on her way to break her Ramadan fast, according to her attorney and video footage of the arrest.

Video credit: Daniel Boguslaw

Ozturk’s attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, says her team is unaware of her whereabouts, has been unable to contact her, and that no charges have been filed against Ozturk that they are aware of. The ICE locator database on Wednesday afternoon listed Ozturk as being held in the “South Louisiana Processing Center” in Basile, Louisiana – more than 1,400 miles away from Somerville, Massachusetts, where Ozturk was detained. ICE and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

A DHS spokesperson claimed without evidence that “DHS and ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” The spokesperson added, “A visa is a privilege not a right…This is commonsense security.”

Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was targeted after the McCarthyite organization Canary Mission accused her on its website of “anti-Israel activism.” The proof was scant, involving an op-ed she co-wrote calling on Tufts to follow democratic outcomes.

Exactly one year ago, on March 26, 2024, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in the student newspaper, in which she and three other students urged Tufts to heed resolutions that were overwhelmingly passed by the student senate, including one resolution that called on university leadership to acknowledge the Palestinian genocide and divest from companies with ties to Israel.

“This arrest is the latest in an alarming pattern to stifle civil liberties,” Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said in an emailed statement. “The Trump administration is targeting students with legal status and ripping people out of their communities without due process. This is an attack on our Constitution and basic freedoms — and we will push back."

Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who represents the district where Ozturk was detained, echoed Warren, saying: "This is a horrifying violation of Rumeysa's constitutional rights to due process and free speech. She must be immediately released. And we won't stand by while the Trump Administration continues to abduct students with legal status and attack our fundamental freedoms."

On Tuesday night, Tufts president Sunil Kumar wrote in an email to university affiliates that the school had no prior knowledge of the arrest, nor did they share information with federal authorities. Kumar said university officials were told that Ozturk’s visa had been terminated. He added that they were seeking to confirm whether that was true, and would assist in connecting Ozturk to external legal resources if they requested it.

Late Tuesday, a federal judge granted her lawyer’s request that Ozturk not be moved out of the state without advanced notice to the court from the government. It's unclear whether Ozturk was taken to Louisiana after the judge's order.

State-Sanctioned ‘Kidnapping’

A source who witnessed the arrest said that what stuck with them was that the incident was “clearly premeditated” with “overwhelming force.”

They told Zeteo that at least one officer was carrying a firearm, and that one of the agents’ vehicles had been parked on the street since 4:00 AM, according to a neighbor’s camera. They saw the vehicle when they left for the morning and returned in the evening.

As Ozturk walked down the sidewalk, three people got out of the vehicle and began crossing the street, one pulling up his hood, according to the video of her arrest. They confronted Ozturk, who appeared confused. They then grabbed her and pulled her phone out of her hand, as the other officers began pulling up ski masks to cover their faces.

Amid the confusion, several other people emerged, pulling masks over their faces. According to the witness, the masked individuals insisted they were either police or with the police. The witness never heard them identify the agency they were from. The masked individuals continued to tug at her backpack, eventually taking it from her.

The detainment – with no apparent charges or clear grounds – appeared less like a legal arrest and more like a “kidnapping,” said the source.

"They did not start very well by identifying themselves or anything like that. And then when, like, questioned, they said either we are the police, or we're with the police, I think they say both. And it's all sort of like, yeah, fucking right man, you're with the police. Like, I can say that, and I can buy that badge from a fucking costume store."

A String of Arrests

Ozturk’s arrest is the latest in a growing list of the Trump administration’s crackdown on students who have spoken out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Legal experts question the constitutionality of the crackdown, given its complete dismissal of First Amendment rights, as well as its attempts to retrofit and weaponize law to target individuals without any solid legal basis.

The case of Columbia student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, remains ongoing. Khalil was detained under an obscure provision that allows the secretary of state to deem noncitizens as a foreign policy risk and have them deported – a law that experts told Zeteo likely is unconstitutional.

Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of the media about the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia University on June 1, 2024. Photo by Jeenah Moon/Reuters

The Justice Department has subsequently tried to justify his arrest, claiming he did not state on his green card application that he previously worked for the Syria office of the British Embassy and was a member of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

One of Khalil’s attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout, called the allegations "completely meritless” and said they show “that the government has no case whatsoever on this bogus charge that his presence in the U.S. would have adverse foreign policy consequences."

Van Der Hout says Khalil was not a “member” of UNRWA; he simply did one of his three Columbia-approved internships there. On Khalil’s embassy work, Van Der Hout says Khalil’s work there “ended in December 2022, as he stated in his residency application.”

Khalil was similarly sent over a thousand miles away from his home to Louisiana. Just months ago, rights groups published a report on facilities in Louisiana titled "Inside the Black Hole: Systemic Human Rights Abuses Against Immigrants Detained & Disappeared in Louisiana."

Another Columbia student, 21-year-old Yunseo Chung, a South Korean national who has lived in the US since she was 8 – had her green card revoked by the Trump administration. Chung is suing the Trump administration to stop their targeting of her and other students. On Tuesday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order stopping the Trump administration from detaining her.

Badar Khan Suri, an Indian scholar at Georgetown University, was arrested by masked agents last week. Suri has been taken through several detention centers and has now been placed a thousand miles away from his family, in a detention center in Texas.

The Trump administration has justified the arrest on the grounds that Suri apparently has "close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, a senior adviser to Hamas.” The charge is in reference to his father-in-law, who was a former Hamas government adviser, who left his position more than a decade ago and has since become a writer and commentator, who has been quoted in the New York Times.

Suri’s attorney, Hassan Ahmad, told Mehdi Hasan that his client’s father-in-law is “a person that, according to the information that we have, he [Suri] has met twice in his entire life, doesn't really know, and has not had any sort of meaningful relationship with.”

A judge has blocked Suri’s deportation for now.

Prem Thakker is Zeteo’s political reporter. Send tips via email or Signal (premthakker.35).

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