The ruling comes months after the Tufts doctoral student was freed from ICE detention where she was held for opposing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The United States government must restore Rumeysa Ozturk’s student visa record, a federal court has ruled, months after the Tufts student was released from immigration detention where she was being held for speaking out against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
United States District Judge Denise Casper delivered an interim ruling on Monday that US President Donald Trump’s administration must restore Ozturk’s name to a database of foreign students administered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), known as SEVIS.
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The return of her SEVIS record would allow Ozturk, who is a doctoral student in childhood development and the media at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, to work and participate in research related to her studies, her lawyers said.
In a statement responding to the ruling, Ozturk said her student record was “unlawfully cancelled” because she co-wrote an op-ed advocating “for equal dignity and humanity for all”.
“After eight long months, that record will now finally be restored,” she said.
“Going through this brutality, which began with my unlawful arrest and 45 days of detention at a shameful for-profit ICE prison in Louisiana, I feel more connected to everyone whose educational rights are being denied – especially in Gaza,” Ozturk added, noting that “countless scholars have been murdered and every university has been intentionally destroyed,” in the Palestinian enclave.
Ozturk, who came to the US from Turkiye to study as a Fullbright scholar, was taken into immigration detention on March 25 after her student visa was revoked as part of a wider Trump administration’s crackdown on students who spoke out against Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.
Many universities had already begun harshly cracking down on the protests, which included the student encampment at Columbia University in New York, in a bid to repress criticism of the war, which received considerable funding and political support from the US government and companies.
“Here in the US, it is truly sad how much valuable knowledge is currently being lost due to the widespread fear of punishment within the academic community,” Ozturk said in her statement on Monday.
She was one of four Tufts students who co-authored an article published on March 26, 2024 in the Tufts Daily student newspaper, calling on the university to implement student resolutions to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” as well as to “disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel”.
The Trump administration said it had revoked her visa because she had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organisation”.
Jessie Rossman, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, one of the organisations representing Ozturk, said they were grateful her record would now be reinstated after months of “unlawful, and unfair, treatment”.
“Ms Ozturk came to Massachusetts as a scholar to study childhood development and the media, and we all benefit when she is able to fully participate in her doctoral program,” Rossman said in a statement.
Although many of the students arrested by the Trump administration for pro-Palestinian activism have since been released from detention, several, including former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, have continued to face legal issues related to their immigration status.
Meanwhile, Leqaa Kordia, a 32-year-old Palestinian woman who participated in the Columbia University protests, is still being detained in immigration detention, according to Amnesty International, months after she was arrested on March 13.
