Rabia Iclal Turan
25 April 2025•Update: 28 April 2025
WASHINGTON
US President Donald Trump has said he was not aware of the detention of a Turkish doctoral student but pledged to look into the case.
Asked by Time magazine this week whether he would direct the Justice Department to disclose any evidence linking Rumeysa Ozturk to the Palestinian group Hamas, Trump said in remarks published Friday: “I would have no trouble with it, no. I’ll look into it, but I’m not aware of the particular event.”
Ozturk, 30, a doctoral student at Tufts University in the northeastern state of Massachusetts, was arrested last month by federal agents as part of the Trump administration’s controversial crackdown on pro-Palestinian students.
After being transferred to the southern state of Louisiana, thousands of miles from her friends and colleagues, Ozturk remains there, but a court has ordered her transferred to Vermont, which neighbors Massachusetts, by May 2 at the latest.
Ozturk’s F-1 student visa was revoked after being targeted by the pro-Israel website Canary Mission for co-authoring an op-ed that called on Tufts to divest from Israel and recognize the “Palestinian genocide.”
The Department of Homeland Security has claimed that Ozturk engaged in activities supporting Hamas, but the administration has yet to present any evidence to substantiate that claim.
Asked about her case last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the revocation of her student visa, saying – without providing evidence – "We give you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”
According to an April 14 report by The Washington Post, which cited a March internal memo, the US State Department found no evidence that Ozturk engaged in antisemitic activity or supported a terrorist organization, and concluded there were no grounds to revoke her visa.
