US court blocks deportation of pro-Palestine Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk
A US immigration court has dropped the deportation case against Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student and research assistant at Tufts University, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in Massachusetts last year over her pro-Palestine activism.
The Department of Homeland Security failed to prove Ozturk’s removability, prompting the immigration court to terminate the deportation proceedings against her, her lawyers said.
Ozturk is enroled at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human development at Tufts University. On 25 March, masked agents approached and physically restrained her after the US Department of State revoked her student visa amid a crackdown on foreign students and activists involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy.
Ozturk's arrest came after she co-authored a March 2024 opinion article in the university newspaper, Tufts Daily, where she called for "the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination".
Following her article, Ozturk's photo and other identifying information were posted on Canary Mission, an anonymous doxxing platform based in Israel that documents individuals and organisations it considers to be "antisemitic".
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The Department of Homeland Security and ICE said she was detained for "supporting" Hamas but have not publicly provided evidence for their allegations, and she has not been charged with any crime.
"Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the US government," Ozturk wrote in a statement on Monday.
"Though the pain that I and thousands of other women wrongfully imprisoned by ICE have faced cannot be undone, it is heartening to know that some justice can prevail after all."
The PhD candidate was moved between several states after her arrest and experienced repeated asthma attacks without receiving proper medical treatment, her lawyers said.
In May, a judge had ordered the Trump administration to free Ozturk, warning that "continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens".
Last detained Columbia protester hospitalised
The court's decision comes as Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman in ICE custody, has been hospitalised after a seizure on Monday. She was later discharged from hospital and returned to detention.
Reacting to the news, Amnesty International called for Kordia's immediate release, saying that she has been "arbitrarily detained" for exercising her rights to free speech and protest.
“It is alarming that Leqaa’s medical condition has deteriorated significantly while in ICE detention," Justin Mazzola, deputy director of research at Amnesty International USA, said on Monday.
"Not only have ICE officials neglected Leqaa’s health, but they failed to update her lawyers and family on her health status and whereabouts following her hospitalisation," he added.
The Palestinian woman was first arrested in April 2024 during a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza at the gates of Columbia University, but was released soon after.
She was arrested again in March 2025, when she voluntarily went to ICE headquarters in Newark for what she thought was a routine meeting with officers regarding her immigration status.
The Department of Homeland Security claims she was arrested for allegedly overstaying her visa, but has also pointed to Kordia’s protesting to keep her detained.
In an opinion piece to US Today last month, Kordia said that she came to the United States from the occupied West Bank on a valid visa in 2016, after spending 20 years separated from her mother, who then lived in Gaza, due to Israeli travel restrictions.
She has lost nearly 200 family members in Gaza since Israel's genocidal war began. That, and the US support for Israel, made her feel "compelled to participate" in protests, although she was not a student at Columbia, she wrote.
Kordia said she mistakenly relinquished her student visa on her path to pursuing permanent residency through her mother, who is a US citizen, and insisted that her arrest is related to her participation in protests for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s siege on Gaza.
An immigration judge has twice called for Kordia’s release but it has been repeatedly blocked, including through the activation of a special regulation that was created a month after the 9/11 attacks "to prevent the release of aliens who may pose a threat to national security".
Kordia is the last Columbia protester still in detention after President Donald Trump's crackdown on pro-Palestine protests on college campuses across the country.
"All have been released, but their fight against this administration's ideological deportation and enforcement policy continues," she said last month. "It is past time for me to be released as well."
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