Turkish scholar Rumeysa Ozturk returns home after US deportation efforts

Former Tufts University Student Returns to Turkiye Amid Ongoing Immigration Battle

A doctoral student who faced deportation under President Donald Trump has chosen to return to her native Turkiye. Rumeysa Ozturk made the announcement through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Friday, following a nearly yearlong legal battle with the Trump administration.

Ozturk received her PhD in child study and human development in February and had been targeted for deportation due to her pro-Palestinian advocacy. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused her of having “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” although there is no evidence to support this claim.

Surveillance video of Ozturk’s arrest, which went viral in late March 2025, showed six plain-clothed immigration officers surrounding her on the street outside her Massachusetts apartment. She was subsequently handcuffed and transported to various detention centers across the country before being released on May 9.

Ozturk had co-signed an opinion column in her student newspaper, The Tufts Daily, along with three other students, which called for her university’s president to acknowledge the Israeli genocide of Palestinians and divest from companies with ties to Israel. The Trump administration cited the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 as giving it the power to remove legal immigration documents from foreign nationals if deemed to cause “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States.

Ozturk’s case was one of several high-profile instances of the Trump administration targeting foreign students for their pro-Palestinian advocacy. She has stated that she made the decision to return to Turkiye in order to avoid “losing more time to the state-imposed violence and hostility.”

Source: Al Jazeera