Half a dozen masked federal immigration agents in plainclothes ambushed a Tufts University international student from Turkey on March 25, according to a dramatic video shared by pro-Palestine and immigrant rights advocates. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar and Ph.D. graduate worker, had just left her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, on her way to an iftar with friends, when the group of agents surrounded her and grabbed her phone as she screamed. 

“Can I just call the cops?” Ozturk is heard asking in the video. “We’re the police,” one of the agents responds, pulling off Ozturk’s backpack before she is loaded into an SUV.

Ozturk’s lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, told Prism in an emailed statement on March 26 that she was not able to contact Ozturk, but the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) locator database listed her as detained at the South Louisiana Processing Center. A judge had ordered ICE not to take Ozturk out of state without 48-hour notice. 

“Nothing in this video indicates that these are law enforcement agents and from which agency. This video should shake everyone to their core,” Khanbabai said. “Rumeysa has not been accused of committing any crime. It appears the only thing she is being targeted for is her right to free speech. This is one piece of the puzzle in the Trump administration’s broader campaign to attack any student, green card holder, or human rights defender associated with the peaceful movement against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”

Earlier on the day of Ozturk’s arrest, immigration agents arrested an Iranian University of Alabama student at his home around 5 a.m. The university’s student newspaper The Crimson White reported that Alireza Doroudi, a doctoral student of mechanical engineering, was on an F-1 student visa. According to the ICE database, Doroudi was in ICE custody but did not list his location as of March 27. 

Both arrests came weeks after Department of Homeland Security agents arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a humanitarian, soon-to-be father, and recent Columbia graduate on March 8. At the time, President Donald Trump promised to continue detaining visa and green card holders in the U.S. if they had been speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians. 

The terrifying scenes of students being detained without due process have evoked comparisons by several nonprofit organizations, students, and Khalil himself to Israel’s arbitrary detention of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

What we are witnessing today is a confluence of sorts between the brutal reality of life under occupation in Palestine and the neo-fascist climate here in the United States.

Taher Herzallah, American Muslims for Palestine

“What we are witnessing today is a confluence of sorts between the brutal reality of life under occupation in Palestine and the neo-fascist climate here in the United States,” Taher Herzallah, the director of outreach and grassroots organizing at American Muslims for Palestine, said in an email. “Essentially, Israel’s apartheid system in Palestine and placing Palestinians under military law constitutes a war crime because it creates two different legal regimes for people living on the same land. Here in the U.S., it is clear that the administration is trying to do something similar, whereby they deem anyone to be ‘pro-Hamas’ which then gives the government leeway to violate their rights.”

The Trump administration has used college campuses as a way of suppressing free speech by threatening to cut federal funding if they do not comply with his demands. The American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association filed a lawsuit on March 25, stating the administration has created “a climate of repression” on campuses.

The Trump administration launched an online form in late February for people to report “illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning.” The administration then sent 60 colleges letters alleging “antisemitic discrimination,” with officials canceling $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University. In a decision facing heavy pushback within academia, Columbia released a document on March 21 agreeing to the administration’s demands, which include implementing a ban on masks at protests; adding 36 “special officers” with the power to arrest students; and placing the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under review.

“The Trump administration has made it their priority to brand students and those standing against genocide as public enemies,” Herzallah said. “This is a gross mischaracterization that gives license to law enforcement and immigration enforcement agencies to take unprecedented action against law-abiding residents of the U.S. Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians are only the entry point to a larger project that seeks to eviscerate the rights of all Americans and to destroy institutions of higher learning.”

Some students being hunted by ICE—such as lawful permanent resident and Columbia student Yunseo Chung and visa holder and Cornell student Momodou Taal—have resorted to suing the Trump administration. Others who have already been arrested include Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian Columbia student from the West Bank, and Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University. Neither were allowed to speak with their lawyers for days after their detainment. Khalil and Suri are detained at Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center and Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana, respectively, while Kordia is being held in Prairieland Detention Center in North Texas. 

“I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention—imprisonment without trial or charge—to strip Palestinians of their rights,” Khalil said in a March 18 letter from detention. “I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.”

More than 15,700 Palestinians have been detained by the Israeli military since October 2023, according to Palestinian figures, and several detainees have been subject to sexual assault, gender-based violence, and torture. 

“We Palestinians did not choose this for ourselves,” Herzallah said. “We didn’t choose for Israelis to occupy us and we didn’t choose for the U.S. to be the primary benefactor of Israel. We are just locked in a horrible cycle of dehumanization and erasure that has simultaneously culminated in the genocide in Gaza and the worst attack on Palestinians here in the U.S.”

Kamil Cook, an organizer for the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) in Central Texas, said the escalation of detaining students is “part of the concerted effort from the Zionist state of Israel and the U.S. to generally liquidate the Palestinian struggle wherever it is.” 

“ These universities are more than capitulating to the demands of the Trump administration. They’re more than bending over backward to try and appease the administration to the detriment of their students’ rights and to the detriment of the sanctity or the functioning of their own universities,” Cook said. “ It’s more important than ever to continue to stand up and continue to speak out against these injustices that we’re seeing in Gaza.”

A protest organized for Ozturk in Somerville on March 26 was attended by more than 2,000 people. Organizers there drew parallels between ICE’s actions and those of the U.S. abroad. 

“What you are feeling now is the fear that this country has caused the rest of the fucking world for decades,” Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Boston-based Muslim Justice League, said in a speech. The group is part of a coalition of at least 20 Massachusetts organizations operating a hotline to report ICE activity in neighborhoods. 

Ahmad said that protesters in attendance should put their outrage into action against the detainment of all immigrants, including the 370 people who were taken in a flurry of arrests in Massachusetts the previous week.

“Fascism is not on the horizon; it’s on our doorstep,” Ahmad said.

Lea Kayali, an organizer with PYM’s Somerville chapter, emphasized building community power.

“The Democratic Party is not going to save you. They didn’t save Rumeysa. She is detained. They didn’t save hundreds of thousands of my people murdered by U.S. bombs,” Kayali said. “This whole damn system has to go.”

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor