State Department Finally Admits Real Reason It Detained Tufts Student

It’s official: ICE abducted a Tufts University student over an op-ed.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD candidate, was snatched off the street by six masked federal officers in March last year, even after the State Department had determined that the Trump administration had no evidence linking her to antisemitic activity.

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and Homeland Security Investigations alleged that by co-authoring an opinion essay in the student newspaper that demanded Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from companies tied to Israel, Ozturk was “creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a terrorist organization.”

A State Department memo, newly unsealed Thursday, states that the Trump administration “has not provided any evidence showing that Ozturk has engaged in any antisemitic activity or made any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or antisemitism generally.”

While Ozturk had expressed support for a student resolution put forth by the now-banned group Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, the Trump administration did not supply evidence that Ozturk was involved in “any of the activities which resulted in TJSP being suspended from Tufts.”

Ozturk’s apparent kidnapping was part of a spate of arrests of foreign-born academics who had merely expressed support for Palestinians. If cruelty is the message of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrants and free speech, then Ozturk’s arrest was part of the opening salvo.

In May, a federal judge ordered that Ozturk be released from federal custody “immediately,” as she had made “substantial claims” that her constitutional rights had been violated. “Her continued detention chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens,” U.S. District Judge William Sessions said at the time.