Appeals court hears case of Turkish student detained for writing op-ed

WASHINGTON

A US federal appeals court heard arguments Tuesday on behalf of Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was detained in March by immigration authorities in retaliation for co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza.

“Ms. Ozturk was held behind bars for six weeks for writing an op-ed, and that never should have happened,” Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said during an online briefing after the hearing.

“The government is asking the court to be the first to ever hold that there is no access to judicial review if the government weaponizes immigration detention authority to keep someone locked up simply for exercising their free speech rights. Our argument is that of course, the courts have a role to play when individuals’ liberty and freedom of speech are at stake,” she said after the hearing at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

“There's no reason that Rumeysa Ozturk should be in detention,” she added.

- Opinion piece led to arrest

Ozturk’s message, read during the briefing, said her op-ed called on Tufts University to heed student voices and recognize the Palestinian genocide.

She described writing as “one of the most peaceful methods of communication and ways of taking action” and “the heart of freedom of expression.”

“Unbelievably, it was my writing, a single opinion piece published in our student newspaper, that led to my arrest and ultimately landed me in a damp, crowded, and inhumane ICE for-profit prison for 45 days,” she said.

“As my case continues to move forward, I am grateful for the outpouring of support, and expect to see the basic principles of our democracy prevail,” she added.

Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar and PhD student in child development at Tufts University, was arrested by plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who surrounded her outside her Somerville, Massachusetts home on March 25, an incident captured on video.

Her student visa was revoked by the State Department and she was sent to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, where she spent six weeks, before a federal judge in Vermont ordered her release on May 9, citing her asthma and a lack of justification for her continued detention.

Her detention followed an online targeting by the pro-Israel website Canary Mission, which took aim at her for co-authoring an op-ed in the student newspaper The Tufts Daily in March 2024 criticizing the university’s response to Israel's brutal assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians.

The appeals court also heard the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University. Mahdawi, who has publicly spoken in support of Palestinian rights, argues that his visa revocation and detention are part of a broader effort to target noncitizen activists.

A ruling in both cases has not yet been issued.