Above photo: ACLU.
US immigration authorities claimed a Turkish PhD student in Massachusetts was ‘supporting terrorism’ for speaking out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Newly released court documents confirm that US immigration authorities arrested a Turkish university student in the state of Massachusetts last year over an opinion article she wrote criticizing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, rather than for “terrorist activity,” CNN reported on 26 January.
In March last year, Rumeysa Ozturk, a PhD student at Tufts University, was walking on the street when plainclothes immigration officers suddenly detained her. She was transported to a detention center on the other side of the country, in Louisiana, and held there for six weeks.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved Ozturk’s deportation. However, a federal judge blocked the move and ordered her release from federal custody in May.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities moved to detain Ozturk after she authored an article in the student newspaper calling on Tufts to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
A judge has unsealed the memo ordering the detention & deportation of Rümeysa Öztürk. It confirms the sole evidence against her was that she co-wrote an op-ed the government disliked.
Here she is being arrested by men in plainclothes. Over an op-ed. pic.twitter.com/VrN95XhTuE
— Billy Binion (@billybinion) January 23, 2026
At the time, US President Donald Trump and the Israel lobby in the US were seeking to clamp down on a wave of student protests at universities across the country demanding an end to Israel’s bombing campaign and destruction of Gaza.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed that Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.”
A State Department memo said her student visa was revoked based on the claim that her actions “may undermine US foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization.”
However, a separate State Department memo released as part of the newly disclosed court documents states that DHS, ICE, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) had not found that Ozturk had “engaged in any antisemitic activity or made any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or antisemitism generally.”
Here is the newly-unsealed State Department memo confirming — finally — that the detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk was based on an op-ed.
No antisemitic activity. No support of terrorism.
An op-ed in a student newspaper. https://t.co/cfl8OZmXKT pic.twitter.com/0WgoNzDZxy
— Adam Steinbaugh (@adamsteinbaugh) January 23, 2026
The State Department memos further reveal that the White House struggled to find any evidence to justify revoking Ozturk’s visa.
Another finding in the newly released documents reveals that, in some cases, White House officials doubted whether the deportation of Ozturk and other pro-Palestine student protesters was justifiable and could hold up in court due to laws protecting free speech.
Upon ordering Ozturk’s release, William K. Sessions, a US district court judge for Vermont, stated that her “continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”
