ICE Detains Tufts Grad Student Who Allegedly Showed Support for Hamas
“A visa is a privilege not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security.”
A Tufts University grad student named Rumeysa Ozturk from Turkey was detained by ICE on Wednesday because she had allegedly expressed support for Hamas. Her visa has reportedly been terminated.
Uproar over her detainment was immediate. No one has ever seen the radical left on campus held to account in this way and many people are simply stunned.
FOX News reports:
ICE detains Tufts University student amid Trump admin’s campus crackdown
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained a Tufts University student in Somerville, Massachusetts, according to the agency and a statement from university President Sunil Kumar.
ICE confirmed Rumeysa Ozturk’s detention to Fox News on Wednesday. She is originally from Turkey.
“We have received reports that an international graduate student was taken into custody this evening by federal authorities outside an off-campus apartment building in Somerville,” Kumar said in a statement. “The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event, and the location where this took place is not affiliated with Tufts University.”
Kumar noted that the school was told Ozturk’s visa had been terminated, and the university is looking into “whether that information is true.”…
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Fox News that Ozturk was “granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa.”
“DHS and ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans,” the spokesperson said. “A visa is a privilege not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security.”
You can see the video of her arrest below:
Federal agents have detained Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk. After graduating from Columbia, she led pro-Hamas, violent antisemitic, and anti-American events as a PhD student at Tufts.
She now faces deportation.
Shalom, Rumeysa. pic.twitter.com/7yhoQZXxyg
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) March 26, 2025
She previously attended Columbia? What a surprise.
The Tufts Daily has more on Ozturk and the campus reaction:
Coalition for Palestinian Liberation at Tufts and Palestinian Youth Movement called for an emergency rally to take place at 5:30 p.m. this afternoon in an Instagram post early this morning.
“We will fill the streets of Somerville and Raise Our Banners. We won’t let Trump take our students and immigrant neighbors without a fight,” the post reads.
In March 2024, Ozturk coauthored an op-ed in the Daily, calling on Kumar to endorse Tufts Community Union Senate resolutions for the university to recognize genocide in Gaza and divest from Israeli corporations. Canary Mission, a website with the stated purpose to “document people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses,” cited the article as “anti-Israel activism.”
Somerville, MA is a very progressive community and people there wasted no time protesting this.
CBS News in Boston reports:
Protesters demand release of Tufts student taken into custody by federal agents in Massachusetts
Hundreds of people gathered at Powder House Park on Wednesday, to demand the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PHD student at Tufts University, who was arrested by federal agents Tuesday night.
The 30-year-old graduate student and Fulbright Scholar was detained Tuesday by federal agents in Somerville. A representative of the Department of Homeland Security said the student “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” She’s now being held at an ICE Detention Center in Central Louisiana.
“The university campus should absolutely be a place for the free and open exchange of ideas and the fact that someone can just be disappeared into the abyss for voicing an idea is absolutely horrifying,” said rally attendee Sam Wachman.
Powder House Park is very close to the Tufts campus.
Standing with thousands of Somerville residents to denounce the sickening, unlawful abduction of Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk by masked federal agents last night. We need to bring Rumeysa home and organize a coordinated defense of our immigrant neighbors and our rights. pic.twitter.com/LSGLLlraIi
— Mike Connolly (@MikeConnollyMA) March 27, 2025
Some of the usual suspects are outraged.
This is a horrifying violation of Rumeysa's constitutional rights to due process and free speech.
She must be immediately released.
And we won't stand by while the Trump Administration continues to abduct students with legal status and attack our fundamental freedoms. https://t.co/EH2s9runwf
— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@RepPressley) March 26, 2025
Horrifying. Disappearing and targeting students with legal status over peaceful political speech is unconstitutional and a clear violation of due process and free speech.
Another blatant act of authoritarianism by the Trump Administration.
Rumeysa must be released. https://t.co/DN8KkaiRbY
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 27, 2025
Tufts University has been a hotbed for radical anti-Israel activity since the October 7th attacks. On the anniversary of the attacks last year, the school’s ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ chapter occupied a campus building.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
FAFO…
Looks like she found out.
They need to change everything about visa. They should be harder to get. The rules for withdrawal should be simplified. Everything should be done to minimize judicial interference.
I would also like to see a ban on visas from certain countries. That won’t happen or would be struck down by a judge but I think we have a right to prevent people with certain views from ever entering. This is not a free speech issue but one of safety for our country and its citizens.
It won’t be struck down if Congress does it. The challenges to Trump last time around were entirely because he didn’t seem to be complying with the relevant statute.
That is already the law, and has been used without controversy by every administration for the past century or more. The issue here is about expelling people for opinions they expressed after entering, while they have constitutional protection.
If there were better arguments out there (who’s moral and who isn’t) instead of who’s more oppressed, they wouldn’t support Hamas. As it is, it’s a fashion thing, each side equally good, falling into a coin flip and sort of a free speech problem.
Where have you been? The entire campus debate revolves around the supposed unmitigated evils of Zionism & Jews.
Hardin likes to support Hamas by whining that opposition to them is just competing over who is “more oppressed”.
The key takeaway for me is the sense of entitlement displayed by not just these Aliens who were accorded the revocable privilege of entry into our Nation but by their wokiesta/leftist allies. These folks are guests who can be told to depart. This has always been the case but we finally have a POTUS willing to use the inherent power granted by Congress to remove them. Accountability and consequences are like kryptonite to leftists and they can’t help but to pitch crying, wailing fits just like a toddler being denied something. Aliens do not possess the same panoply of rights and protections accorded to US Citizens. Not a new concept but one so rarely brought into effect in recent years that a false perception has come to exist in certain quarters.
Yes, they do. The constitution says “all persons”.
Sure about that? See the 2nd and 14th amendments.
The 14th amendment is the one that says the constitution protects “any person”.
(Correction to the above comments, where I misquoted it as “all persons”; but they mean the same thing. “All persons” is in a different clause.)
The 2nd says that the right it protects is “of the people”, which some judges have understood to mean that only individuals who are “of the people” are protected, but I don’t believe any of those judges would apply the same reasoning to the fourth amendment, or to the last two clauses of the first. So that’s an inconsistency that will eventually have to be addressed.
Yet, when we find out something that would have barred them from receiving a visa in the first place then yes, we should revoke it. If he had told the Department of State that he’s an America-hating, terrorist-supporter I don’t think they’d have issued that visa.
“So that’s an inconsistency that will eventually have to be addressed.”
So here we are. Let’s “address” this
Apprehend the terrorist, incarcerate them in safe areas (read that as out of the control of leftist judges – or as Chief Justice Roberts denies, Obama judges), deport them, and then they can litigate from the safety and security of their home countries.
Then President Boasberg can kiss our collective asses.
But at least the terrorists will be safely removed.
No they do not. An Alien that commits a crime alongside their US Citizen partner in crime can be deported but a natural born US Citizen is not subject to deportation. An Alien may be refused entry and/or reentry into the USA but a Citizen may not be refused (assuming passport in order. An Alien bears the burden of proof of their eligibility for admissibility and under some circumstances within 5 years of entry during removal.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
When they said ourselves and our posterity, they weren’t talking about noncitizens.
Most of their “supporters” don’t give a rat’z azz about those people – it’s the MOVEMENT and the OPPOSITION to PRESIDENT TRUMP! How many of them would take them into their OWN homes and provide for them? Yeah, thought so!
The left has metastasized from being simply an opposition party IN the United States into an OPPOSITION Party OF the USA! Their goal is to destroy Our Nation!
As far as the VISAS? Let’s just be FAIR to ALL Student VISA holders and REVOKE ALL OF THEM! Send them ALL home and let them RE-APPLY for admittance! WHO would be hurt by this? Oh yeah, the leftist universities mostly!
If we are going to rid ourselves of illegals then let’s move it a bit farther and see how Our Society calms down!
Let’s see how quickly the HATE and DISGUST ends in “higher learning”! Let’s review the NEW VISAS like they SHOULD have been and make it very clear – YOU ARE A GUEST in OUR NATION – ACT LIKE ONE or LEAVE!!
Yep. These folks opposing the deportation of terrorists/terrorist fellow travelers acting to extort institutions via threats of violence/occupation unless they surrender to the terrorist demands don’t seem to appreciate that the USA is under no obligation to renew any current Visa or approve any new Visa applications.
I don’t wanna hear any BS about ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ when/if the.day comes and the Admin shuts down all Student/academic Visas.
Next step under Trump: ICE detains Tufts Grad Student Who Allegedly Showed Support for Ukraine. Coming to a campus near you. You need to study what Alan Dershowitz is writing about this. Key word in the headline is “allegedly”.
Feminized left wing theater kid frets over imaginary problem.
Be sure to write that one down for your next struggle session.
Correction: A former Tufts Grad student.
!940, German grad student here, vociferously supports the Nazi regime. I hope we would have kicked him out.
Not for his advocacy alone.
Defending the indefensible.
What a Nation we would have with you making the rules and decisions! VISAS can be canceled for anyone espousing the NAZI ideology since it is in direct conflict with Our Constitution!
Yes for advocacy alone. See Emma Goldman
1940? Not likely to be deported at that early date.
Aliens are subject to revocation of the permission granted to be in our Nation. They are not US Citizens. Much like parolees the burden for retaining their permission is on the Alien to demonstrate they have complied with all the strictures of the grant of permission to be here. Playing footsie with Hamas is not a good way to that.
They are obnoxious, sick amd entitled fools
Go to Iran, Saudi Arabia
Women have ALOT of rights right there sweetheart
You know, it’s strange that these people think that there’s going to be no repercussions for acting like this. When my wife was here on a Visa we never even thought about doing anything politically active, especially because it was under the Obama Administration and I absolutely didn’t trust that bastard. But no, you don’t make waves when you’re a guest and you can be Uninvited more easily than you were invited. Because it took months for her to get a Visa even with me sponsoring her.
It’s interest5ing the way the people supporting the terrorist sympathizer lie about what happened.
* Being arrested, is NOT being abducted. You may not like the fact of the arrest but it’s still a legal action, not a criminal one.
* Being jailed (or detained) after arrest is NOT being “disappeared” which is a term that was created to describe how people in authoritarian regimes were murdered and their bodies disposed of without a trace. There is no rational comparison between that and arrest-incident detention.
Also whether their speech is what has caused the revocation of the privilege of having a visa or whether they did something else – the Columbia protests are notorious for thuggish behavior and vandalism – has not been shown.
If I didn’t already oppose these people, their aggressive lies would convince me that I should.
“The university campus should absolutely be a place for the free and open exchange of ideas and the fact that someone can just be disappeared into the abyss for voicing an idea is absolutely horrifying,” said rally attendee Sam Wachman.
That’s nice Sam, but no one is going into an abyss except you with your halfassed ideas. You’ve been duped, you’re fighting for a group of people who won’t let you express your ideas if they get into power. Oh and they want you exterminated.
If he supported them before this, then yes. But he may be opposed to them and everything they stand for, and have come out now only on the civil liberties issue, because if we allow civil liberties to be abridged when it’s our opponents then we won’t have them when it’s us.
That’s why about 15 years ago pretty much everyone and his dog put in amicus briefs for the KKK. Because the Klan happened to be in the right in that case, and if they had lost everyone would have suffered.
Material support for terrorists by a foreign national here on a visa should see that visa revoked immediately. “But muh free speech!” ends with violence.
As usual, this ignores the fact that it is unconstitutional for the government to take any action against someone in retaliation for exercising a constitutional right. So yes, a visa is a privilege, but it can’t be denied just because the person expressed an opinion the government doesn’t like, while she was in the USA. Opinions she expressed elsewhere, before coming here, are fair game, and can be used as grounds to deny her entry; but opinions expressed here can’t be used as grounds to revoke her visa and expel her.
Motive matters.
New information should always be applicable.
Perhaps you need to read the visa application a lot more closely.
Her visa wasn’t revoked for her opinions, but for the crimes she committed “expressing” those opinions.
There is a very important distinction between US Citizens and Aliens. What is permissible for US Citizens is not necessarily permissible for Aliens. ‘Retaliation’ is doing a lot of lifting. Enforcement of prohibitions on conduct of Aliens leading to deportation isn’t ‘retaliation’.
No one is claiming that Aliens can be removed for normal political speech and advocacy of candidates or issues. However, an Alien who steps out of that into advocacy for terrorism/terrorists and/or participates in criminal acts and/or impermissible conduct like taking over public/private property, denying access or egress, signing onto acts/threats of extortion ‘divest from Israel or we gonna occupy your property, disrupt the activities of others, prevent movement to from the occupied area’…. those sort of things are not protected by 1A. Acts of protest may be speech but when it drifts into commission of criminal/civil violation/torts that is no longer ‘speech’ and attempting to use the 1A as a shield for these illegal acts is a crock.
How does it benefit me, you and the rest of the citizens of the United States to apply due process to visa holders who are here as OUR guests?
A visa in an invitation for an alien to come to the United States in anticipation of being a benefit to the citizens of the United States. It is we who determine whether the benefit is mutual and therefore we can extend their stay or rescind that invitation at any time.
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