Burlington Protesters Call for Release of Tufts Grad Student

Hundreds of people rallied outside Burlington’s federal courthouse on Monday to protest the detainment of Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish doctoral student who was arrested near Boston last month by masked ICE agents.

Federal authorities have accused the Tufts university grad student of engaging in activities “in support of Hamas,” a claim for which they have provided no evidence. Ozturk’s attorneys say she was targeted for cowriting an op-ed in a student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to the war in Gaza.

Ozturk was driven to New Hampshire and then Vermont on the night of her arrest before being put on an early morning flight out of Burlington to Louisiana, where she’s now being held.

In an affidavit, she says she believed she was being abducted, not arrested, on March 25, and that she feared for her life. She was unaware that the federal government had revoked her visa, she said, and had no idea that the men who put her into a van were actually immigration authorities. She was denied a call to a lawyer, she said, and was provided little information about what was happening.

She recounted how she saw men and women “handcuffed and belly chained” while at a temporary holding center in Louisiana. “We were placed in a cage-like vehicle and could not communicate with the officers detaining us,” she said. “We waited in this place for 3-4 hours. We had no access to food or water.”

She has been in Tufts’ Child Study and Human Development program and said she is eager to complete work on her PhD, which she has been pursuing for five years. She has nine months left to complete the degree, she said.

Monday’s protest coincided with a hearing in her case before Judge William K. Sessions III, who has been asked to determine whether the Vermont court has jurisdiction in the legal challenge to her arrest.

Demonstrators blocked traffic on Elmwood Avenue for more than two hours as they waved Palestinian flags and carried signs that read, “Free Speech! Free Rumeysa,” “What Happened To The First Amendment?” and “Rumeysa now. ARE YOU NEXT?”

Several federal agents watched the scene unfold from just outside the courthouse doors, while inside, attorneys debated the surprisingly complicated question of where Ozturk’s case should be heard.

Ozturk’s attorneys petitioned a judge in Massachusetts on the night of her arrest, accusing the government of violating her constitutional rights to free speech and due process and demanding that she be released.

But that judge decided she did not have jurisdiction because Ozturk, unbeknownst to her attorneys, was being held in Vermont when the petition was filed. The judge instead transferred the case to Vermont, where Sessions has entertained several hours of arguments on whether his court can legally address the matter.

Federal attorneys want the case to be heard in Louisiana, a state with one of the most conservative appeals courts. Ozturk’s attorneys say it should remain in Vermont.

Sessions did not make an immediate decision on Monday but is expected to rule soon. Signaling that he may decide to hear the case himself, he said he hopes to schedule a hearing for next month to address the question of whether Ozturk’s arrest violated her rights.

In her affidavit, Ozturk described conditions at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile as “unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane.”

She and 23 others are being held in a cell meant for 14 people, she said. Guards threaten to withhold meals from detainees who do not cooperate with their orders, she said. They also enter the cell at all hours, triggering the overhead fluorescent lights.

“None of us are able to sleep through the night,” she said.

She has been suffering from asthma attacks and said her requests for medication she’s prescribed have been denied. So have her requests for a Quran and a prayer rug, she said.

Her attempts to work on her dissertation, meanwhile, have been slow going: Nearly two weeks passed before she was given some paper and pens.

“I pray every day for my release,” she said.

You can read her account of her apprehension and detention here:

This story will be updated.

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