Case dropped against Tufts student who was grabbed off the street by ICE: ‘True justice will prevail’

An immigration court judge has terminated deportation proceedings against Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University scholar whose arrest last March by masked ICE agents on the street is among the defining images of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign.

The Department of Homeland Security failed to meet its burden to prove that the Turkish doctoral student needed to be deported, and an immigration court judge terminated the case, her lawyers told a federal appeals court Monday.

The filing was included in Ozturk’s case before a federal appeals court in New York, where she continues to challenge the constitutionality of her arrest and detention.

“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,” Ozturk said in a statement.

“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.

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Administration officials publicly accused Ozturk of engaging in activities “in support of Hamas,” but internal documents from State Department officials admitted there was no evidence that Ozturk “engaged in any antisemitic activity” or “made any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization.”

Ozturk had co-authored an op-ed in a student newspaper that criticized university leaders for dismissing students’ concerns about Israel’s war in Gaza. Nevertheless, administration officials — relying on a pro-Israel activist group that created an online directory of student activists — canceled her student visa and signed a warrant for her arrest.

Plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were covering their faces when they grabbed Ozturk while she was walking near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, on March 25 last year.

She was held inside an ICE detention center in Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles away, for more than six weeks.

Dozens of internal memos unsealed in a separate lawsuit revealed how Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally directed officials to deport several high-profile activist figures, including Ozturk and Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil.

One senior diplomat repeatedly cautioned Rubio that stripping visas and green cards over “actions inextricably tied to speech protected under the First Amendment” would likely fail in court.

In a lawsuit seeking her release, Ozturk’s legal team argued that her arrest and detention was retaliatory and unconstitutional in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.

On May 9, six weeks after her arrest, a federal judge ordered her release from detention on bail, which the Trump administration appealed. Oral arguments were heard by a three-judge panel in September and a decision is still pending.

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Despite her victory, the Trump administration continued to push for her removal in immigration court.

Unlike federal district courts, immigration courts operate under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice and under the direction of the office of Attorney General. The proceedings and filings are generally not public, and the judge’s decision that Ozturk cannot be deported was filed under seal.

“Under the government’s view, it could punitively detain any noncitizen in retaliation for her speech for many months, so long as it simultaneously institutes removal proceedings — no matter how unmeritorious — all without any federal court review of the lawfulness of detention at any time,” her lawyers wrote to the federal appeals court Monday.

The Independent has requested comment from the Justice Department.

In a statement, Ozturk’s legal team condemned the Trump administration’s “weaponization” of immigration system to target dissent.

“It has manipulated immigration laws to silence people who advocate for Palestinian human rights and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” according to Mahsa Khanbabai of Khanbabai Immigration Law.

“Secretly revoking the visa of someone who has maintained their lawful immigration status as an excuse to detain them and place them into deportation proceedings, on the basis of free speech, is Kafkaesque,” she said. “I hope that other immigration judges will follow [the judge’s] lead and decline to rubber stamp the president’s cruel deportation agenda.”

Ozturk says she is grieving for others “who do not get to see the mistreatment they have faced brought into the light.”

“When we openly talk about the many injustices around us, including the treatment of immigrants and others who have been targeted and thrown in for-profit ICE prisons, as well as what is happening in Gaza, true justice will prevail,” she said.