Memo reveals US authorities lacked evidence of wrongdoing by Turkish scholar
The memo, dated March 21, 2025, and made public Thursday by a federal judge, shows that the Department of Homeland Security referred Fulbright scholar Ozturk for F-1 visa revocation after she co-wrote an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper criticizing the university’s handling of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The document states that Homeland Security “has not … provided any evidence showing that OZTURK has engaged in any antisemitic activity or made any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization.”
Authorities flagged the article’s references to pro-Palestine student groups, including Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (TSJP), which the US had temporarily suspended, and the article’s encouragement for students to join a “student intifada.” Homeland Security concluded that such activities and associations “may undermine U.S. foreign policy.”
Despite the absence of terror-related evidence, the memo recommended revoking Ozturk’s visa under discretionary authority, citing “the totality of the circumstances,” and instructed that the action be carried out quietly without notifying her due to “ongoing ICE operational security.”
Ozturk, a PhD student in child development, was arrested outside her Somerville, Massachusetts home by plainclothes ICE agents on March 25, 2025—a detention captured in a widely circulated video. She was held at an ICE facility in Louisiana for six weeks before a federal judge in Vermont ordered her release on May 9, citing her asthma and the lack of justification for her continued detention.
Last month, a US district judge ruled that the Trump administration likely acted unlawfully in terminating her student status and ordered the restoration of her SEVIS record.
Ozturk was among multiple international students targeted during the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine campus activism. The memos, submitted as evidence in a Massachusetts trial in July, also document the detention of pro-Palestine students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, primarily for their participation in campus protests, writings, and public speeches.
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