On Tuesday, March 25, Rumyesa Ozturk, a Turkish national and doctoral student at Tufts University, was detained by ICE officials in masks while she was walking in Somerville, MA.
Ozturk, the student, had previously left her home in Somerville to go meet up with some friends around 5:30 pm, when she was stopped by six people in masks.
Surveillance footage from Michael Mathis, a homeowner in that neighborhood, has since been released where in the video listeners can hear a man say “Why are you hiding your faces?”
In response to the members of the group saying “We’re the police”, before they surround Ozturk, put her in handcuffs, and lead her away to a nearby car.
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an article in Tufts daily paper criticizing Tufts’ action around the Palestinian conflict. Her lawyers are claiming her arrest is unconstitutional and violates her right to freedom of speech and due process.
The current whereabouts of Ozturk are not yet officially known, however U.S. Immigration has reported she ‘s being held in an ICE processing center in Basile, Louisiana.
While a senior DHS (U.S Department of Homeland Security) spokesman has confirmed Ozturk’s detention and termination of her visa, Ozturk was not supposed to be permitted to be moved outside the district of Massachusetts without 48 hours advance notice, based on a decision from the U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani.