April 3 (UPI) — Tufts University wants a federal judge to release Rumeysa Ozturk, the Fulbright Scholar from Turkey grabbed off the street by masked ICE agents, without delay. A hearing was being held Thursday in federal court in Boston over the apprehension.
Tufts issued a statement supporting Ozturk’s lawyers as she seeks release that said, “The University seeks relief so that Ms. Ozturk is released without delay so that she can return to complete her studies and finish her degree at Tufts University.”
Ozturk was accosted and taken by force by the armed agents, then sent to a Louisiana detention facility despite not being accused of any crime.
Her attorneys said in a petition to the court, “Rumeysa’s arrest and detention are designed to punish her speech and chill the speech of others. Indeed, her arrest and detention are part of a concerted and systemic effort by Trump administration officials to punish students and others identified with pro-Palestine activism.”
She was in the United States on a legal student visa. But the Trump administration, through Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is revoking the legal status of students it has targeted who express dissent by using First Amendment rights on campus.
Ozturk is a doctoral student who wrote an op-ed critical of the university’s administration and in support of three Tufts Senate resolutions demanding the university acknowledge “the Palestinian genocide” and divest from Israel.
The university said her op-ed didn’t violate any policies.
Tufts also said the opinion piece also did not “constitute a violation of the University’s understanding of the Immigration and Naturalization Act.”
That act has been invoked by the Trump administration as it claims authority to make the arrests.
The Trump administration has arrested other students for exercising free speech, including Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil. Students at Cornell and Georgetown University also have been arrested and held, and none have been criminally charged.
Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian doctoral student at the University of Alabama, was arrested by ICE March 27 without giving a location of his detention.
Other students targeted include the attempted arrest of Columbia student Yunseo Chung, who sued as she avoided arrest. A judge ordered she not be arrested as she fights deportation.
Georgetown University post-doctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri was arrested in March. Cornell graduate student Momodou Taal had his student visa revoked.
The “disappearing” and other aggressive actions against the students are happening amid threats from the Trump administration to slash federal funding for universities unless they tow Trump’s ideological lines.
