The ICE Detention of a Turkish Student Is a Serious Free Speech Test

How much do you really believe in free speech?

On Tuesday evening, Turkish doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was on her way to meet friends for an iftar dinner to break her Ramadan fast. She never made it there. Instead, the 30-year-old Tufts University PhD student was surrounded by six plainclothes officers who grabbed her arms, confiscated her phone, and pulled masks over their faces as they detained her, according to surveillance video obtained by the Muslim Justice League.

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In the video, you can hear the officers say, "We're the police," to which a bystander responds, "Yeah, you don't look like it. Why are you hiding your faces?" One minute later, Ozturk was whisked away in an SUV.

If this sounds like something out of an authoritarian country, well... that's because it is.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson claimed Ozturk had "engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization," but provided zero evidence for this claim. Friends and colleagues are baffled, noting that her only known activism was co-authoring an op-ed in the student newspaper calling for Tufts to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

"To my knowledge, the only thing I know of that Rumeysa organized was a Thanksgiving potluck," said Jennifer Hoyden, a close friend who studied with Ozturk at Columbia University's Teachers College, told the Associated Press.

By the time a federal judge ordered that Ozturk not be moved outside Massachusetts, she had already been transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana — more than 1,400 miles from where she was seized.

This is the latest in a disturbing pattern. Earlier this month, immigration enforcement agents arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate with legal U.S. residency. Georgetown University fellow Badar Khan Suri was apprehended by masked agents last week. And Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old South Korean national who has lived in the U.S. since she was 8, had her green card revoked.

What's happening here isn't subtle. The Trump administration appears to be engaging in a systematic campaign to intimidate and silence critics of Israel's actions in Gaza, particularly targeting students and academics who are not U.S. citizens.

Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who represents the district where Ozturk was detained, called it "a horrifying violation of Rumeysa's constitutional rights to due process and free speech.”

For years, we've heard endless hand-wringing about "campus cancel culture" and the supposed threat to free speech posed by student protesters and academics. We've endured countless debates about supposed leftist censorship and demands for "viewpoint diversity."

So where are all those free speech warriors now?

If you're genuinely concerned about free speech, this should be setting off alarm bells regardless of your position on Israel-Palestine. The government is literally snatching people off the streets for expressing political opinions and shipping them 1,400 miles away from their homes, lawyers, and support systems.

You don't have to agree with Ozturk's views to find this deeply alarming. I don't know what her precise opinions are beyond the op-ed she co-authored (which I'll share below), and frankly, it doesn't matter. What matters is that in America, we don't detain people for their political speech.

Or at least we're not supposed to.

This goes beyond just hypocrisy. There's something profoundly broken in our discourse when millionaire pundits can spend years ranting about the "threat to free speech" posed by college students protesting or faculty using preferred pronouns, while remaining silent when the government literally detains people for their political expression.

Free speech isn't just about protecting speech you agree with. It's about protecting speech you vehemently disagree with. If we only defend speech we like, we're not defending free speech at all — we're just picking sides.

The Trump administration is essentially claiming it can detain noncitizens for expressing views it deems problematic, with no specific criminal charges and without providing evidence. If this doesn't concern you because you disagree with the political views of those being detained, then you were never actually concerned about free speech — you were just concerned about protecting certain viewpoints.

What's happening to Ozturk, Khalil, and others is a real-time stress test for America's commitment to its founding principles. And so far, many self-proclaimed defenders of free speech are failing miserably.

Tufts University President Sunil Kumar issued a statement saying the university "did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event," and adding that "we are in touch with local, state, and federal elected officials and hope that Rumeysa is provided the opportunity to avail herself of her due process rights."

That's better than nothing, but it feels awfully tepid given what's at stake. The question isn't whether they shared information with the federal government; it's what they're doing now to protect their student who's been shipped across the country to a detention facility.

"We recognize how frightening and distressing this situation is for (Ozturk), her loved ones, and the larger community here at Tufts, especially our international students, staff, and faculty who may be feeling vulnerable or unsettled by these events," Kumar added. "Let me assure you that the university is doing everything in our power to support our community."

Everything in their power? Really? Because I'm not seeing statements from the university explicitly denouncing this detention as a violation of academic freedom and free speech. I'm not seeing university lawyers being dispatched to Louisiana. I'm not seeing the kind of full-court press you'd hope an institution would mount when one of its students is essentially disappeared by federal agents.

Compare that to the reaction of some elected officials. Sen. Elizabeth Warren called this "an alarming pattern to stifle civil liberties" and "an attack on our Constitution and basic freedoms." Rep. Pressley unequivocally demanded Ozturk's immediate release. That's the kind of forceful response the moment demands.

Here's what we know about Ozturk: She's a Turkish national pursuing a PhD at Tufts on a valid F-1 visa. Her arrest appears to stem primarily from her co-authoring an op-ed in the student newspaper that called on Tufts to "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide" and divest from companies with ties to Israel.

After publication, her name, photo, and work history appeared on Canary Mission, a website that aims to document people who allegedly "promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews."

Now she's being held in a detention center in Louisiana, where her lawyer says she hasn't been given access to her medications, including one for asthma attacks.

A bystander who witnessed her detention told Zeteo that what stuck with them was that the incident was "clearly premeditated" with "overwhelming force," adding that one of the agents' vehicles had been parked on the street since 4:00 AM.

Here's the full text of the op-ed that Ozturk co-authored with three other Tufts students in March 2023:

Op-ed: Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions

On March 4, the Tufts Community Union Senate passed 3 out of 4 resolutions demanding that the University acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar's statements, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel. These resolutions were the product of meaningful debate by the Senate and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law. Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.

Unfortunately, the University's response to the Senate resolutions has been wholly inadequate and dismissive of the Senate, the collective voice of the student body. Graduate Students for Palestine joins Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, the Tufts Faculty and Staff Coalition for Ceasefire and Fletcher Students for Palestine to reject the University's response. Although graduate students were not allowed by the University into the Senate meeting, which lasted for almost eight hours, our presence on campus and financial entanglement with the University via tuition payments and the graduate work that we do on grants and research makes us direct stakeholders in the University's stance.

While an argument may be made that the University should not take political stances and should focus on research and intellectual exchange, the automatic rejection, dismissive nature and condescending tone in the University's statement have caused us to question whether the University is indeed taking a stand against its own declared commitments to free speech, assembly and democratic expression. According to the Student Code of Conduct, "[a]ctive citizenship, including exercising free speech and engaging in protests, gatherings, and demonstrations, is a vital part of the Tufts community." In addition, the Dean of Students Office has written, "[w]hile at times the exchange of controversial ideas and opinions may cause discomfort or even distress, our mission as a university is to promote critical thinking, the rigorous examination and discussion of facts and theories, and diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions." Why then is the University discrediting and disregarding its students who practice the very ideals of critical thinking, intellectual exchange and civic engagement that Tufts claims to represent?

The role of the TCU Senate resolutions is abundantly clear. The Senate's resolutions serve as a "strong lobbying tool that expresses to the Tufts administration the wants and needs of the student body. They speak as a collective voice and are instrumental in enacting systemic changes." In this case, the "systemic changes" that the collective voice of the student body is calling for are for the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination — a right that is guaranteed by international law. These strong lobbying tools are all the more urgent now given the order by the International Court of Justice confirming that the Palestinian people of Gaza's rights under the Genocide Convention are under a "plausible" risk of being breached.

This collective student voice is not without precedent. Today, the University may remember with pride its decision in February 1989 to divest from South Africa under apartheid and end its complicity with the then-racist regime. However, we must remember that the University divested up to 11 years after some of its peers. For instance, the Michigan State University Board of Regents passed resolutions to end its complicity with Apartheid South Africa as early as 1978. Had Tufts heeded the call of the student movement in the late 1970s, the University could have been on the right side of history sooner.

We reject any attempt by the University or the Office of the President to summarily dismiss the role of the Senate and mischaracterize its resolution as divisive. The open and free debate demonstrated by the Senate process (exemplified by the length, open notice and substantive exchange in the proceedings and the non-passing of one of the proposed resolutions), together with the serious organizing efforts of students, warrant credible self-reflection by the Office of the President and the University. We, as graduate students, affirm the equal dignity and humanity of all people and reject the University's mischaracterization of the Senate's efforts.

The great author and civil rights champion James Baldwin once wrote: "The paradox of education is precisely this: that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which [they are] being educated." As an educator, President Kumar should embrace efforts by students to evaluate "diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions." Furthermore, the president should trust in the Senate's rigorous and democratic process and the resolutions that it has achieved.

We urge President Kumar and the Tufts administration to meaningfully engage with and actualize the resolutions passed by the Senate.

This op-ed was written by Nick Ambeliotis (CEE, '25), Fatima Rahman (STEM Education, '27), Genesis Perez (English, '27) and Rumeysa Ozturk (CSHD, '25) and is endorsed by 32 other Tufts School of Engineering and Arts and Sciences Graduate Students.

You can agree or disagree with the sentiments in this op-ed. That's not the point. The point is that writing it shouldn't result in being snatched off the street by masked federal agents and shipped to a detention center 1,400 miles away.

We either believe in free speech or we don't. And right now, too many people who claim to be its champions are showing exactly how conditional their support actually is.