> Turkish student at Tufts University is latest Palestinian supporter swept up in US crackdown
Turkish student at Tufts University is latest Palestinian supporter swept up in US crackdown
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A Turkish student detained by federal officers as she walked along a street in a Boston suburb is the latest supporter of Palestinian causes to be swept up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants who have expressed their political views.
Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was swiftly moved out of Massachusetts, a demonstration of how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is sending immigrants who are taken into custody to detention centers or deporting them altogether before a federal judge has a chance to weigh in on their case and possibly halt the actions.
Ozturk, who was detained Tuesday shortly after she left her home in Somerville, had been moved to a ICE detention center in Basile, Louisiana, by the time her lawyer went to court and a judge ordered her to be kept in the state, U.S. government lawyers said in a court document Thursday. They said they made her lawyers aware that she was being moved there and facilitated contact with her Wednesday night.
A senior Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said federal authorities detained Ozturk after an investigation found she had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” The department did not provide evidence of Ozturk’s support of Hamas.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration has revoked the visas of at least 300 people, including Ozturk: “We do it every day."
“We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist, to tear up our university campuses. And we’ve given you a visa, and then you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away, " Rubio told reporters on a stop in Guyana.
Friends and colleagues of Ozturk said she was not closely involved in pro-Palestinian protests that broke out on campuses last spring. Her only known activism, they said, was co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper that called on Tufts University to engage with student demands to cut ties with Israel.
“To my knowledge, the only thing I know of that Rumeysa organized was a Thanksgiving potluck,” said Jennifer Hoyden, a close friend who studied with Ozturk at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “There’s a very important distinction between writing a letter supporting the student Senate and taking the kind of action they’re accusing her of, which I’ve seen no evidence of.”