Anti-Israel Turkish student who faced deportation released from detention

With the help of the ACLU, Turkish doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was released from ICE detention facility after the judge blocked Trump administration’s attempt to deport her over alleged support for Hamas.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

A Turkish student residing in the United States has been released from custody and allowed to return to Massachusetts weeks after she was arrested by immigration authorities and faced the loss of her student visa.

On Friday, 30-year-old Tufts University doctoral candidate Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national, was released from an immigration detention facility in Louisiana after a federal judge ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to allow Ozturk to return to her home in Massachusetts.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions rejected arguments by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defending the decision to revoke Ozturk’s student visa and deport her over her alleged support for Hamas.

Sessions also instructed ICE officials to immediately release Ozturk and to notify his office of the implementation of his order.

Ozturk was taken into custody more than six weeks ago and was initially slated to be deported after the Trump administration revoked her student visa.

According to Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin, Ozturk was found in a DHS investigation to have supported the Hamas terror organization in Gaza.

“Rumesya Ozturk is a Turkish national and Tufts University graduate student, granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa. DHS + ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans,” McLaughlin 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.”

Within hours of her detention, however, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued an injunction temporarily barring Ozturk’s deportation or removal from Massachusetts.

Nevertheless, Ozturk was transferred to an ICE facility in Louisiana, where she remained until her release on Friday.

In his order last week, Sessions blasted immigration officials for Ozturk’s arrest and efforts to deport her, arguing that ICE lacked evidence for its claim of Ozturk’s alleged support for Hamas.

“There is no evidence here as to the motivation, absent the consideration of the op-ed,” Sessions III said. “There is absolutely no evidence that she has engaged in violence, or advocated violence, she has no criminal record.”

Ozturk had co-authored an opinion piece accusing Israel of war crimes and calling for a boycott of the Jewish state, leading some to suspect this op-ed led to DHS’ accusations of support for Hamas.

The American Civil Liberties Union aided Ozturk’s legal bid to remain in the U.S.

The ACLU argued to the court that the Trump administration violated Ozturk’s constitutional rights to free speech.

“There’s absolutely no evidence that justifies detaining Ozturk for a single day, let alone the six and a half weeks that she has been detained, because she wrote a single op-ed in her student newspaper exercising her First Amendment right to express an opinion,” said Jessie Rossman, director of the ACLU’s Massachusetts branch.