Hundreds of protestors gathered in Somerville Wednesday to call for the release of a Tufts University student who was arrested by federal authorities Tuesday — the latest in a string of arrests by the Trump administration targeting international students who participated in pro-Palestine protests.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts, is in the U.S. on a student visa. She was handcuffed by plainclothes officers on a Somerville street Tuesday and put in an unmarked SUV, according to a video published by the Boston Globe.
According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, Ozturk is being held at South Louisiana Ice Processing Center, despite a federal judge ordering for her not to be removed from Massachusetts without notice.
“We need to call what happened to Rumeysa what it is: state-sanctioned political kidnapping,” said a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement who spoke at the rally. “She was abducted by armed agents of the state because she dared take a stand against genocide.”
Ozturk is a prominent member of the Tufts pro-Palestine movement and published an op-Ed in the Tufts Daily March 26, 2024, criticizing Tufts President Sunil Kumar and calling for the university to start “acknowledging the Palestinian genocide.”
Ozturk is also a member of Service Employees International Union Local 509, a union representing Massachusetts workers, including Boston University faculty, graduate workers and ResLife employees.
The Trump administration vowed to deport pro-Palestine activists that it said engaged in antisemitic or “illegal” protests.
A prominent arrest happened March 8 with Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and leader of the university’s pro-Palestine movement. Ozturk completed her master’s degree at Teachers College Columbia as a Fulbright scholar.
In a letter to the Tufts community Tuesday, Kumar confirmed an unidentified student had been arrested by federal authorities outside an off-campus building. He wrote the university was not given prior notice, nor was provided any information from the authorities.
Ellen McDonald, a librarian at Tufts who attended the rally, said it’s important to understand that “a threat to one university, like Columbia, is a threat to all of us.”
Freedom Baird, who works in educational technology services at Tufts, said the large turnout at the protest demonstrates the level of concern and need for a “bolder stance” from universities.
“We want to see academic freedoms fought for across the country, not just locally, but everywhere in every school and every college,” Baird said.
The Rev. Fred Small, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Cambridge, said he “immediately dropped everything” when he heard about Ozturk’s arrest. He said he attended the rally because he is “deeply concerned about the violation of due process rights since Trump’s inauguration.”
He said “all of us are in danger” when people are abducted and incarcerated for exercising their free speech rights.
“It doesn’t matter what you feel about the particular issue involved,” Small said. “All of us are in danger when the president, or anyone else in government, can say this person supports terrorism without evidence.”
Holding a sign that reads “Jews against illegal abductions,” Nate, a musician and teacher who didn’t wish to give his last name “when people are getting illegally abducted on the street,” said he is concerned by the messaging by the Trump administration.
“It’s important to be out here, specifically as a Jewish person,” he said. “A lot of what the Trump administration is doing now, they say they’re doing in the name of fighting anti-semitism, and that is absolutely a smoke screen for just enacting the agenda that they want to enact.”
Nate said he hopes the gathering will gain the attention of as many people as possible to spotlight the actions of the Trump administration.
“We can’t have people just disappearing off city streets and no one says anything,” Nate said. “That’s how you end up with a straight up dictatorship, so I’m hoping, at the very least, people will be talking about this a lot.”
Rachel Smit, a Boston lawyer, said she is concerned by the lack of respect for federal judicial rulings by the Trump administration.
“This administration has demonstrated that they have no respect for the rule of law,” she said. “Whether or not they comply with the judge’s orders is a totally open question, and that should never be the case.”
Carrying the same sign that reads “Silence equals complicity,” which she made for a protest during Trump’s first term, retired teacher Laura Brooks echoed the level of concern for the Trump administration’s actions, especially in regard to immigration, and encouraged everyone to use their voices.
“So many of us feel helpless, powerless, and it feels good to be in company with other people,” Brooks said.
Smit said civil resistance is key to stop the government from continuing to act as has been.
“There’s no reason to believe that it won’t change unless we, the people, stop it from happening,” Smit said. “That takes everyone.”
