Hundreds protest after Turkish student is arrested near Boston by masked immigration agents

U.S. immigration authorities have detained and revoked the visa of a Turkish doctoral student at a Massachusetts university who had voiced support for Palestinians in Israel's war in Gaza, a development the state's attorney general called "alarming."

A video of Rumeysa Ozturk's arrest showed masked and plainclothes agents taking the 30-year-old Turkish national into custody near her home in Somerville, Mass., on Tuesday evening. The Tufts University student was heading to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast, according to her lawyer.

The arrest in the town just northwest of Boston fuelled a large demonstration of hundreds of protesters in Somerville on Wednesday night.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a post on X authorities determined Ozturk "engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans."

"A visa is a privilege not a right," McLaughlin said.

She did not specify what specific activities were engaged in by Ozturk, a Fulbright Scholar and student in Tufts' doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development. Ozturk had been in the country on an F-1 visa to study.

Ozturk co-authored an opinion piece a year ago in the school's student paper, the Tufts Daily, that criticized the school's response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide."

"Based on patterns we are seeing across the country, her exercising her free speech rights appears to have played a role in her detention," said Mahsa Khanbabai, Ozturk's lawyer. Khanbabai called the claims against Ozturk "baseless" and said people should be "horrified at the way DHS spirited away Rumeysa in broad daylight."

U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) in President Donald Trump's administration has detained or sought to detain several foreign-born students who are legally in the U.S. and have been involved in pro-Palestinian protests. The actions have been condemned as an assault on free speech, though the Trump administration argues that certain protests are antisemitic and can undermine U.S. foreign policy.

"Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views," Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement. "This isn't public safety, it's intimidation that will, and should, be closely scrutinized in court."

Following Ozturk's arrest, Khanbabai filed a lawsuit late on Tuesday arguing she was unlawfully detained, prompting U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston that night to order ICE to not move Ozturk out of Massachusetts without at least 48 hours notice. Yet by Wednesday night, ICE's online detainee locator system listed her as being held at an ICE processing centre in Louisiana.

Talwani has given the government until Friday to respond to her order to answer why Ozturk was detained.

Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio in particular have pledged to deport foreign pro-Palestinian protesters, accusing them of supporting Hamas militants, posing hurdles for U.S. foreign policy and of being antisemitic. Trump has disparaged some schools as "infested with radicalism."

Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights with antisemitism and support for Hamas.