Boston: US federal immigration officers arrested a PhD student from Turkey studying at Tufts University near Boston on Tuesday night and cancelled her visa, said her university and lawyer. The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national, was taken by authorities close to her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, according to her attorney, who has filed a case in Boston federal court saying she was wrongly detained.
US District Judge Indira Talwani responded to the case by ordering US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) not to move Ozturk out of Massachusetts without first telling the court, and to keep her in the state for at least 48 hours. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have not commented. Ozturk, aged 30, is a Fulbright Scholar and a student in Tufts’ doctoral programme in child study and human development, her LinkedIn says. She earlier studied at Columbia University. Last year, she helped write an opinion piece in Tufts’ student paper that criticised the university’s actions on student demands to stop investing in companies tied to Israel and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.” Her lawyer said she holds an F-1 visa.
Judge halts US plan to deport Columbia student
On Tuesday, a federal judge stopped the Trump administration from deporting a 21-year-old Columbia University student who had joined pro-Palestinian protests. Her lawyers said the government started the deportation process for Yunseo Chung this month. At a court hearing in Manhattan, the judge said there was no sign that Chung was dangerous, a foreign-policy risk, or had links to terrorist groups.
(Reuters and NYT)
