ICE Detains Tufts University Student Amid Trump Admin’s Campus Crackdown

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained a Tufts University student in Somerville, Massachusetts, according to the agency and a statement from university President Sunil Kumar.

ICE confirmed Rumeysa Ozturk’s detention to Fox News on Wednesday. She is originally from Turkey.

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The legal team representing Ozturk told Fox News she had a valid F-1 visa status prior to her arrest. They also said no charges have been filed against their client and are demanding her release.

“Rumeysa was heading to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast on the evening of March 25th when she was detained near her home in Somerville, MA by DHS agents,” Khanbabai Immigration Law told Fox News in a statement. {snip}

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In March of last year, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts Daily, a student newspaper, taking issue with the university’s response to several resolutions passed by the Tufts Community Union Senate on March 4, 2024, writing, “demanding that the University acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.”

Ozturk was a medical graduate student at the Tufts University Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development.

President Donald Trump on Jan. 30 signed an executive order to cancel the student visas of Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.

Executive Order 13899 aims to combat the “unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence against our citizens, especially in our schools and on our campuses,” since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, sparking the beginning of a 15-month war that has left tens of thousands of people dead.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” the president said in a Jan. 30 fact sheet on the executive order. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

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