Tufts University student targeted by Trump administration completes PhD

Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student who was targeted by the Trump administration last year in response to co-writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed, completed her doctorate in the US and traveled back to her native Turkey this week.

Öztürk was detained last year by immigration agents in Massachusetts, with video of the Tufts University student’s arrest going viral. She was one of many international students targeted by the Trump administration for pro-Palestinian speech and activism during widespread protests, which were especially active on US college campuses, against Israel’s war in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 deadly attack on southern Israel.

Now, she has returned to Turkey, where she has said she will continue to work in her chosen academic field: child study and human development.

“After 13 years of dedicated study, I am very proud to have completed my PhD and to return home on my own timeline,” Öztürk said in a statement. “The time stolen from me by the US government belongs not just to me, but to the children and youth I have dedicated my life to advocating for.”

“With them in mind, I am choosing to return home as planned to continue my career as a woman scholar without losing more time to the state-imposed violence and hostility I have experienced in the United States – all for nothing more than co-signing an op-ed advocating for Palestinian rights,” she added.

In March 2024, Öztürk and three others co-wrote an op-ed piece for their college newspaper, the Tufts Daily, calling for the university to acknowledge what they termed a genocide of Palestinians. One year later, the newly installed second Trump administration used the op-ed as a pretext to accuse Öztürk of antisemitism and revoked her visa. She was arrested in March 2025 by masked, plainclothed agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE then took her to a detention center in Louisiana, in what quickly became a pattern, and placed her in deportation proceedings, leading to a lengthy series of court battles.

Öztürk and the federal government reached a settlement agreement earlier this month, resolving outstanding legal issues in federal court that led both the government and Öztürk’s legal team to request her immigration case be dismissed.

In addition to also allowing Öztürk to return to Turkey without interference by the administration, the settlement agreement reinstated her international student status, known as Sevis for the government’s “student and exchange visitor information system”.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, had previously terminated her visa, along with those of other students who had been involved in high-profile pro-Palestinian advocacy. The state department relied on a little-used authority to rescind the visas, accusing some of the holders of supporting Hamas, the US-designated terrorist organisation based in Gaza, although without providing evidence of such support.

“Dr Öztürk is an academic and scholar. The government’s unlawful actions against her forced her into the spotlight,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts. “But in numerous publications over the past year, Dr Öztürk used this platform and her own words to educate the public about what she has experienced, to shine a light on what she witnessed other women in for-profit ICE prisons experience, and to advocate for global human rights with a focus on children.”

An immigration judge earlier this year terminated Öztürk’s case, finding that the government had no grounds to deport her. That immigration judge was fired last week, in a further attempt to reshape the immigration court system. Although the Trump administration originally appealed the judge’s decision, the government and Öztürk have now requested the proceedings be terminated as part of the settlement agreement.

Internal government records obtained as part of a separate lawsuit against Rubio showed that the government had no evidence, outside of the college newspaper op-ed, to revoke Öztürk’s visa and deport her.