Judge drops deportation case against Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk

An immigration judge ended the government’s deportation proceedings against a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University whom plainclothes federal officers grabbed off the street and detained last year, her lawyers said Monday.

Judge Roopal Patel stopped the effort to deport Rümeysa Öztürk — a Fulbright scholar who is in the U.S. on a student visa — on Jan. 29, her lawyers said in a letter dated Monday to a federal appeals court, where they are fighting a separate case.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers snatched Öztürk off a residential street in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts, in March after she wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. She was subsequently held first in Vermont and then transferred to a Louisiana detention center, where she said her hijab was removed without her consent and she suffered multiple untreated asthma attacks. A federal judge ordered her immediate release in early May.

Her case generated widespread outrage, with supporters likening it to an abduction.

In the letter to the appeals court Monday, Öztürk’s lawyers said the immigration court ruled last month that the government had not met the burden of proof to show that the student needed to be deported. The attorneys alleged the ruling “underscores the dangers of the government’s interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act,” a law the Trump administration has invoked to justify its mass deportation agenda. Specifically, the government has pointed to a rarely used provision of the law that stipulates the secretary of state can deport anyone whose presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the U.S.

In a statement released Monday alongside the news of her deportation case being dismissed, Öztürk said, in part, “Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. government.”

“Though the pain that I and thousands of other women wrongfully imprisoned by ICE have faced cannot be undone, it is heartening to know that some justice can prevail after all,” she said.

Öztürk’s lawyer Mahsa Khanbabai called the ruling “justice” for Öztürk, saying that “now, I hope that other immigration judges will follow [the judge’s] lead and decline to rubber stamp the president’s cruel deportation agenda.”

In a statement to MS NOW, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called the decision “more judicial activism at its core to keep a terrorist sympathizer in this country.”

“We are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here,” the spokesperson said. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism — think again,” the spokesperson also said. 

The government has not provided any evidence that Öztürk is a “terrorist sympathizer,” and the DHS spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for it. Öztürk’s lawyers deny that claim.

The DHS spokesperson also did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s inquiry about whether they plan to appeal the immigration judge’s ruling dismissing Öztürk’s deportation case.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said on Monday that Öztürk “never should have faced removal in the first place.”

“Rümeysa is an example to us all of what it means to speak truth to power,” Markey continued. “Her courage and grace are inspiring.”