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Turkish Tufts University PhD Student Released After Six Weeks in ICE Detention.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, has been released from immigration detention after spending more than six weeks in custody. A federal court ordered her release on May 9, following a contentious legal battle over her visa revocation.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions granted bail during a hearing in Burlington, Vermont, allowing Ozturk to leave the detention center in Louisiana where she had been held since late March. Her legal team confirmed that she was released within hours of the decision.
Jessie Rossman, legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts and part of Ozturk’s defense team, welcomed the ruling. “We are so relieved that Rümeysa will soon be back in Massachusetts, and won’t stop fighting until she is free for good,” Rossman said.
Ozturk’s detention has drawn national attention, especially in light of ongoing debates over campus activism surrounding the war in Gaza. She was arrested on March 25 by plainclothes officers near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts. Security footage captured the moment she was taken. After being processed in local facilities, she was transferred to an ICE detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
The U.S. State Department revoked Ozturk’s student visa shortly after she co-authored an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper in March. The article criticized the university’s stance on student demands to divest from companies tied to Israel and referred to what the authors called a “Palestinian genocide.”
Her attorneys argued that the detention was a direct response to her speech, protected under the First Amendment, and warned it could deter others from speaking out. The case escalated when a federal appeals court ruled on May 7 that Vermont was the proper venue for her habeas petition, as she had initially been held in custody there.
Judge Sessions noted the “significant constitutional concerns” raised by the defense and ultimately ruled in favor of her release. Ozturk appeared remotely during the hearing and revealed she had suffered multiple asthma attacks while detained, including one during the court session itself. “The duration and frequency have increased because of both the constant triggers surrounding me and also the stressful environment that I am living in right now,” she told the court, adding she’d had more attacks in detention than in the past two years combined.
A previous emergency order from a federal judge in Massachusetts on March 25th had attempted to block her transfer out of state, but the move was already underway at that point. Government lawyers later testified that it was unclear whether the emergency ruling had reached the proper authorities in time.
At a press briefing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Ozturk’s visa was pulled due to her alleged involvement in disruptive campus activism. “If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States, and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa,” he said, referencing movements that he claimed vandalize universities and intimidate students.
The Department of Homeland Security echoed that stance in a statement, saying, “Visas provided to foreign students… are a privilege, not a right.” They added that the administration remains committed to detaining and removing noncitizens who violate immigration rules. According to TET
Ozturk’s release follows closely behind a similar case involving Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, whose re-detention request was denied by a federal judge just days earlier
