An immigration judge dropped a deportation case against Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University doctoral student who was arrested by masked and plainclothes federal agents nearly a year ago, according to a letter from her lawyers on Monday.
In March 2024, Öztürk was one of four authors of an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper, Tufts Daily, that criticized the university’s administration for failing to act on three student-led resolutions that passed—including calling for the acknowledgement of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and divesting from Israel.
The Trump administration cited the op-ed as grounds for removing Öztürk from the US and revoked her student visa.
But the letter, addressed to a federal appeals court, said that the Department of Homeland Security failed to prove that Öztürk had to be deported from the US. The immigration court thus terminated the removal proceedings. Filings from the termination are not available publicly, according to the lawyers.
The lawyers said that the DHS’ legal case against Öztürk is a dangerous interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which in part states that the Secretary of State can consider someone removable from the US if their actions pose a threat to foreign policy.
According to the government’s perspective on immigration law and Öztürk’s case, “it could punitively detain any noncitizen in retaliation for her speech for many months,” the lawyers wrote in the Monday letter.
As Sophie Hurwitz wrote in Mother Jones, the Trump administration was actively pursuing the deportation of students like Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil to silence dissent—all without providing credible evidence for how they took part in antisemitic activity.
My colleague Najib Aminy examined unsealed court records last month on the case against Öztürk that revealed how the government used unverified accounts spread on social media and blacklists like Canary Mission, anonymously created to smear pro-Palestine activists as evidence. This allows groups like Canary Mission, which receives at least part of its money from major private American foundations, to contribute to targeting by the Trump administration.
“Visas provided to foreign students to live, study, and work, in the United States are a privilege, not a right—no matter what this or any other activist judicial ruling says,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement on Monday. “And when you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”
Öztürk—who researches how adolescents and young adults use social media in a positive, prosocial manner—summed up people’s pursuit of justice in a piece last month in the Cut, reflecting on the past year: “I know that speaking up is essential to prevent people from ending up in a state of screaming fear…Because my scream is not about me, it is bigger than me—it is about us.”
“Though the pain that I and thousands of other women wrongfully imprisoned by ICE have faced cannot be undone, it is heartening to know that some justice can prevail after all,” Rümeysa Öztürk said on Monday.
“I grieve for the many human beings who do not get to see the mistreatment they have faced brought into the light,” she continued, also recognizing immigrants and allies who have been targeted and detained in for-profit ICE prisons.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.