Disturbing Video Shows Masked Men Hauling Away Pro-Palestine Student
Men wearing street clothes identifying themselves as “the police” whisked away an international graduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts after she co-authored an op-ed critical of Israel.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen in the U.S. on a student visa, was detained on Tuesday in Somerville by two men wearing street clothes and masks. In a video posted on social media by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ozturk is seen walking down a sidewalk when she is stopped by a man wearing a hat and hoodie. After saying, “Hi, ma’am,” the man – who did not appear to flash a badge of any kind – seizes her phone as a second man approaches. Those two men eventually handcuff her as others, wearing masks, stand guard.
At one point, one of the men can be heard saying, “We’re the police,” but he did not identify an agency or department.
“You don’t look like it,” a bystander can be heard saying. “Why are you hiding your faces? Why are you hiding your faces?”
One bystander told The Boston Globe that Ozturk informed the men, “I’m a student.” The paper said the bystander spoke on condition of anonymity “for fear of retaliation from the government.”
“We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her,” Ozturk’s attorney Mahsa Khanbabai told The New York Times. “No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of.”
Lawyers for the Department of Justice said Ozturk is being held at a detention facility in Louisiana. She has not been accused of a crime.
Tufts University officials said they were not told of the arrest ahead of time. Last March, Ozturk’s name appeared as a co-author of an essay calling on the school to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Ozturk’s arrest – presumably by the feds – is one of several detentions of international students who have protested against the war in Gaza. Earlier this month, federal authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate who had been active in last year’s campus protests. Khalil was in the country on a green card, and therefore was a lawful permanent resident. However, the State Department now says his status is being revoked ahead of his possible deportation. He is currently being held in a detention facility in Louisiana.
The arrests are part of a crackdown on universities under President Donald Trump, who made the deportation of undocumented immigrants a centerpiece of his campaign last year, though Ozturk was in the country on a student visa.
A profile of Ozturk appears on the website Canary Mission, which publishes personal details of pro-Palestine students in the U.S. in its effort to combat “anti-Semitism.” After reviewing the materials Canary Mission posted on the profile, it is unclear what, if anything, Ozturk said or wrote is anti-Semitic.
