This fundraiser is organized by Rümeysa Öztürk’s Immigration Court legal team:
We are raising urgent funds for the legal support of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and Tufts University graduate student residing in Massachusetts on a valid student visa who is detained by ICE for advocating for human rights and dignity for all.
On Tuesday, March 25th, Rümeysa was heading out to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast when she was abducted by masked, plainclothes agents who didn’t identify themselves until after she asked who they were, falsely claiming to be the police. For nearly 24 hours, we could not locate or contact Rümeysa. Despite a court order preventing her removal from Massachusetts, the Trump administration shipped her to Louisiana, over a thousand miles away from her support network and legal team.
Rümeysa has not been accused of committing any crime and DHS has not produced any evidence that she was engaged in unlawful activities. Instead Rümeysa has been harassed and smeared online by anti-Palestinian hate groups who point to an op-ed she co-authored in the school newspaper last spring urging the university to accept a student government resolution to divest from companies with ties to Israel. The op-ed demanded the university acknowledge the Palestinian genocide and affirmed the “equal dignity and humanity of all people.”