After being arrested by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, the State Department ruled that the Trump administration had no grounds to deport Tufts University student Rumeysa Öztürk, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
ICE agents detained Öztürk in Somerville, Massachusetts on March 25 after she allegedly engaged in antisemitic activities and supported known terror organizations.
According to the Post, the findings said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “did not have sufficient grounds for revoking Öztürk’s visa under an authority empowering the top US diplomat to safeguard the foreign policy interests of the United States.”
Öztürk, a 30-year-old doctoral student from Turkey, wrote an op-ed in 2024 for the Tufts student newspaper which criticized the university’s response to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Her visa revocation is part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students who took part in any pro-Palestine protests which openly supported terror organizations, such as Hamas or Hezbollah.
A hearing for Öztürk’s case is scheduled for next week in Vermont, in which her lawyers say that a deportation such as hers would “violate the United States’ founding principles of freedom of speech.”
According to a memo that the Post received by the DHS before her initial detention in March, stated that Öztürk “engaged in anti-Israel activism in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.”
Mistreatment by ICE
According to Öztürk, ICE agents mistreated her at the ICE facility in Louisiana, claiming that she did not have access to food, had to wait hours for toilet paper, and was not properly treated for her asthma, NBC news reported.
Öztürk also accused the nurse at the facility of removing her hijab without consent.
“The conditions in the facility are very unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane,” NBC cited Öztürk’s declaration on Sunday that was filed to the US District Court for Vermont.
“There was a mouse in our cell. The boxes they provide for our clothing are very dirty and they don’t give us adequate hygiene supplies.”
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