Opinion: Criminal Investigation Needed of ICE Seizure of Rümeysa Öztürk

by John Bonifaz & Alexandra Flores-Quilty

Practicing Democracy

The following column appeared originally on MassLive and on the Free Speech for People Blog on June 17, 2025 and is reposted here with the permission of the authors.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan have an important role to play in fighting the unlawful abductions of U.S. residents by the Trump administration. They should start by investigating whether the abduction and detention of Rümeysa Öztürk violated Massachusetts criminal law.

On March 25, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and graduate student at Tufts University, was taken into custody in broad daylight by plainclothes ICE officers in Somerville. Her valid student visa was unlawfully revoked that same day. She was denied due process, removed from the state without notice, and held incommunicado — with her lawyers, family, and community unable to confirm her whereabouts, health and safety.

Her alleged crime: co-authoring an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper urging the university to comply with a student resolution calling for divestment from companies complicit in Israel’s violations of international law – including what we see as genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation – against the Palestinian people.

A student cannot be stripped of her visa because she exercised her First Amendment rights, and she certainly cannot be arrested and detained for it. But that’s precisely what happened to Rümeysa. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed without merit that Rümeysa’s op-ed had “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

It doesn’t – and the State Department knows this.

In fact, prior to her arrest, an internal State Department memorandum confirmed that the Trump administration had no evidence that Rümeysa engaged in antisemitic activities or supported a terrorist organization, and concluded that Rubio lacked grounds to revoke Rümeysa’s visa. He did so anyway. And the Department of Homeland Security has doubled down on these allegations, claiming that by writing the op-ed, Rümeysa “engag[ed] in activities in support of Hamas” — a word the op-ed never mentioned.

Rümeysa is not the first student that the Trump administration has targeted. Hundreds of students have been illegally stripped of their visas for exercising their First Amendment rights by speaking out about Israel’s violations of international law against the Palestinian people. Others, like Rümeysa, have been kidnapped from the streets, detained and denied access to medical care, their attorneys, and their loved ones, despite holding valid student visas or permanent residency. Their only purported offense was to exercise their right to free speech and free expression regarding Israel’s military actions. The government’s message is clear: Exercise your First Amendment rights at your peril. Do it, and you will lose your education and your freedom.

Rümeysa has not committed any crime – but she may well be the victim of one.

For this reason, Free Speech For People (FSFP) and Somerville for Palestine have launched a campaign urging Massachusetts Attorney General Campbell and Middlesex County District Attorney Ryan to open a criminal investigation into the Öztürk case. As detailed in a letter Free Speech For People issued on April 9, AG Campbell and DA Ryan have the authority and responsibility to hold criminally accountable those responsible for unlawful abductions that take place in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This includes federal officials who act outside the bounds of the law. Thousands of people have since joined our campaign and signed our petition in support of this call.

As FSFP’s letter outlines, “Senior officials in the Trump administration, in coordination with ICE agents, took deliberate steps to arrest and detain Ms. Öztürk unlawfully. Even if individual ICE agents believed they were authorized by law, their superiors knew — or should have known — that the order to detain Ms. Öztürk was unlawful. The kidnapping was not objectively reasonable, and there is strong reason to believe that neither the agents nor the officials who orchestrated it believed their actions were legally justified.”

To her credit, AG Campbell recently joined an amicus brief challenging the Trump administration’s ideological deportation policy. It was a powerful statement, but it is not enough.

Rümeysa Öztürk was detained for 45 days for writing an op-ed. She was abducted from the streets of Massachusetts, purposefully moved from state to state in an attempt to evade court oversight, deprived of proper medical attention, including the use of her inhaler which led to multiple asthma attacks, and denied access to counsel. She is just one of thousands of international students who make their homes in Massachusetts, who are valuable and valued members of our communities and schools, and who remain at risk just for speaking out for Palestinians being subjected to atrocious violence and forced starvation.

During a recent appearance on GBH’s Boston Public Radio, AG Campbell stated that “[w]hen it comes to immigration enforcement, the scale is stacked against us,” claiming that there was little she could do to hold ICE accountable. But when it comes to enforcing state criminal laws prohibiting kidnapping, the duty is squarely with the state attorney general and the district attorney where the kidnapping occurred. Massachusetts has the opportunity and responsibility not only to draw a line in the sand for our state, but to take leadership nationally as politically motivated, unlawful abductions by the Trump Administration continue to occur.

John Bonifaz of Amherst is president of Free Speech For People (FSFP), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to defending our democracy and our Constitution. Alexandra Flores-Quilty is FSFP’s campaign director.)

“Practicing Democracy” is a new Indy series featuring commentary on the assault on democracy and on the possibilities that we can envision for authentic democratic practice. One thing that we can all do to help stem the tide of fascism is to make democracy and democratic sensibilities part of our daily discourse so that we are generating on ongoing alternative to the fascist sensibilities that are becoming part of our daily reality and our everyday common sense. We are casting the net widely, hoping to cover topics from reflections on democracy’s demise under Trump to the possibilities for the democracy that we might create, and from the local to the global.

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