U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested the Turkish national Rümeysa Öztürk, a doctoral student at Tufts University in the Boston area, for supporting Hamas, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Öztürk was “granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa,” a senior spokesperson at the department told JNS. “A visa is a privilege, not a right.”
“Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated,” the spokesperson added. “This is common sense security.”
Öztürk’s arrest comes as the Trump administration seeks to detain and deport those on student visas partaking in “antisemitic, anti-American activity,” as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order to combat antisemitism.
Öztürk, who is Muslim, was arrested on Tuesday outside her apartment in Somerville, Mass., en route to break the Ramadan fast with her friends, according to a statement from her lawyer, the Associated Press reported.
“We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her,” the attorney stated. “No charges have been filed against Rümeysa to date that we are aware of.”
A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ordered that Öztürk remain in the state without advance written notice from the government to the court. Someone with her name, who was born in Turkey, is in custody at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, La., per the ICE website.
Video circulating on social media appeared to show multiple plainclothes officers, some with badges displayed, arresting a woman in a white coat and a pinkish head covering. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, posted a screenshot of the video.
Stop Antisemitism wrote that Ozturk, after graduating from Columbia University, “led pro-Hamas, violent antisemitic and anti-American events as a Ph.D. student at Tufts.”
