On March 9, Rumeysa Ozturk, a postgraduate student at Tufts University, sent a restless text message to Najiba Akbar, the former Muslim chapel of the University, with whom he had become close.
“I recently learned that someone added all my information to a Doxxing website called Canary Mission because of the OP-ES publication last March,” Ms. Ozturk wrote. He was trying to understand what to do about it.
The website published her resume and a picture of her on a red head of scarf and claimed to have “dealt with anti-Israeli activism”. He was also linked to an opinion essay he had written with three other students in the Tufts Student newspaper, critical of the university so as not to impose sanctions on Israel for the Gaza war.
Ms. Ozturk had never hit the chapel as the activist or the face of a movement. It was more introverted, the kind of person he liked to be useful and will remain late after activities at the University’s Religious Center to help clean up.
So Ms. Akbar was shocked this week when she heard that the government had recalled Ms. Ozturk’s visa.
The Domestic Security Department and US Immigration and Customs Investigations have concluded that Ms. Ozturk “dealt with activities to support Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that enjoys the murder of Americans,” according to Homeland Security.
At a press conference this week, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio talked about his booking. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree,” he said, “not to become a social activist who tears our campuses.”
Her friends and teachers said that the characterization is not square with what they knew Ms. Ozturk. “It makes no sense because it was not a figure on the campus,” Ms. Akbar said. “I don’t think she was active in forbidden groups like students for justice in Palestine. From what I know, she did her thing by doing Ph.D.”
Ms Ozturk is one of the many international students, whom the government seeks to deport, after President Trump promised to fight anti -Semitism in campus and punish students’ protesters for bad behavior. Its detention suggests that the government is throwing a wide net, finding not only prominent protesters that have pushed the boundaries and broke the rules, but also some of the quietly involved.
The US Association of Civil Freedoms signed the case on Friday and submitted court documents that demanded its release from custody, arguing that its detention was a violation of the rights of the first amendment, which extend to non -citizens on US territory.
“Rumeysa’s arrest and detention are designed to punish her speech and relax the speech of others,” the complaint said. Her lawyers filed the complaint to the Federal Court in Boston, named as defendant President Trump. Mr Rubio? Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Ministry of Interior Security. and immigration officials.
On Friday, a federal judge decided that he could not move from the country until the court ruled again.
Mrs Ozturk was not accused of any crime and her friends are in loss to understand how the law, the endoscopic student who knows fits the portrait of a political activist presented by the government.
“It doesn’t drive, but if it had to drive, it wouldn’t even have a parking ticket,” said Reyyan Bilge, a professor of psychology at Northeastern. “This is the kind of person we are talking about.”
Her friends also say that they had never seen signs that Ms. Ozturk was anti -Semitic.
“This is not struggling for anti -Semitism, it hurts your cause,” said Dr. Bilge, who taught Ms. Ozturk in Constantinople Sehir in Turkey. Dr. Bilge wrote a recommendation for Ms. Ozturk on the Fulbright scholarship that brought it to the United States. She received her master’s degree in College Teachers College, Columbia University.
A surveillance camera occupied the arrest of Ms Ozturk on Tuesday night. He has received millions of views and stirred wide rage in the social media. The video shows the federal agents in plains and face masks surrounding it on the sidewalk. They take her phone and her backpack, her handcuffs and climbs her into a car without marking.
Mrs Ozturk was talking to her mother in her mother in Turkey when Ice agents surround her, Dr. Bilge said, adding: “She told her mom to invite her best friend” in Boston.
Her lawyer was unable to find or communicate with her for about 24 hours after her detention, according to court documents. In the meantime, the documents say they were asthma -free drugs and suffering asthma attack while on the way to a detention center in Louisiana.
Another of its Turkish teachers, Mehmet Fatih USlu, recalled that her undergraduate dissertation was impressive and reflected a sensitive nature. He focused on representing death in children’s literature.
“The idea that he would support any form of violence is completely unthinkable,” he said. “The claims that associate it with Hamas are completely unfounded and irrational.”
The group that mentioned its opinion essay, Canary Mission, says its goal is to substantiate “people and organizations promoting the hate of the US, Israel and Jews in North America campuses”. But pre-Palestinian students say that they have exposed their personal information to the internet so they can be harassed. The team does not list the employees or sources of funding it on its website. Canary Mission said in a statement that he had not shared any information with the government.
Ice said in a statement that he is not working with advice from Canary Mission.
Friends said they didn’t really know how Ms. Ozturk came to co-write the essay. They suggested that it could have been motivated by her interest in the well -being of children. He studied children’s development. “He loves children,” said Dr. Bilge. “He deeply cares for children’s rights, women’s rights, animal rights – plant rights!”
The essay of the opinion says that “the credible accusations against Israel include deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and reasonable genocide”.
He says the Tufts administration was “completely inadequate and deterrent” requires the university to assign from Israel and recognize a Palestinian genocide.
Mrs Akbar, a former Chaplain, said that Mrs Ozturk wanted to organize a fact about how children are affected by violence and how to support them through it. “I think he was inspired by Gaza and wanted to expand it to Ukraine,” he said in other countries, he said.
Dr. Bilge had Ramadan’s lunch with her family at around 5am when she discovered Ms. Ozturk’s detention. She recalled that her phone is full of messages of people reaching it, both from the United States and Turkey, asking if he had heard the news.
“The thought of ‘Rumeysa’ and ‘is a prisoner’ in the same sentence, the same paragraph, was incredible,” he said.
Dr. Bilge said that before this week he didn’t know the essay. But he said he would fully support it because the tone of writing was “peaceful” and “based on the values of academic research”.
She said her friends abroad had already re -examined if they would cancel trips to conferences in the United States. “Why will you go through this anxiety of thinking that you could hold on to anywhere?” he said.
Ang li They contributed reports.
