An international student in a graduate program at Tufts University was taken into federal custody on Tuesday outside an off-campus apartment building, according to the university’s president.
The university was told that the student’s visa had been terminated, and administrators were “seeking to confirm whether that information is true,” the president, Sunil Kumar, wrote in an email to students, staff and faculty members Tuesday night.
Mr. Kumar’s email did not name the student, but court records appeared to identify her as Rumeysa Ozturk. Late on Tuesday, according to those records, Judge Indira Talwani of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts ordered that Ms. Ozturk, “a Turkish national detained by DHS on March 25, 2025,” not be moved out of the state without advance notice to the court in writing from the government. Judge Talwani’s order said that Ms. Ozturk had asked that a judge determine whether her detention was lawful.
Ms. Ozturk’s court petition named as respondents Patricia Hyde, the acting director of the Boston field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other ICE officials.
Mr. Kumar wrote in the email that Tufts administrators had no prior knowledge of the plan to detain the student, and did not share any information with federal authorities ahead of time.
“We realize that tonight’s news will be distressing to some members of our community, particularly the members of our international community,” Mr. Kumar wrote.
Tufts’s main campus is in Medford, Mass., a small city seven miles northwest of Boston. The student was taken into custody in neighboring Somerville.
Ms. Ozturk was listed as one of several authors of an opinion essay published last March in the Tufts student newspaper. The essay criticized university leaders for their response to demands that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest itself from companies with ties to Israel.
Earlier this month, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and leader of pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations who has permanent U.S. residency, was arrested by federal immigration officers in New York. Though he has not been charged with any crime, the Trump administration has argued that he should be deported to prevent the spread of antisemitism.
At Tufts, the president’s email reminded students of the university’s “established protocol for responding to government agents who arrive on campus (or off-campus) for an unannounced site visit,” which encourages them to call the university police in such situations.
The nearly 12,000 full-time students at Tufts include 1,900 international students from 124 countries, according to the website for the university’s International Center.
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