A Turkish doctoral student detained by US immigration authorities following her pro-Palestinian activism has returned to her native country, a rights group said Friday.
“After 13 years of dedicated study, I am very proud to have completed my PhD and to return home on my own timeline,” Rumeysa Ozturk said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Ozturk, a student at Tufts University near Boston, was detained by federal agents in March 2025 and held in Louisiana for six weeks.
Footage of six masked agents dragging Ozturk off the street as she went to break her Ramadan fast with friends sparked an outcry.
She had co-authored a March 2024 article in The Tufts Daily student newspaper criticizing the college’s handling of student anger around Israel’s war in Gaza.
After a court ordered Ozturk’s release from detention, the US government continued to seek her removal. The case against her was terminated this week after Ozturk agreed to leave the country, the ACLU said.
“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 said in the ACLU statement.
US President Donald Trump has targeted prestigious universities that became the epicenter of the US student protest movement sparked by Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, directing immigration officers to deport foreign student demonstrators.
“The government’s arrest and detention of Rumeysa was unlawful and harmful, as numerous federal court decisions have confirmed that the government had no basis for its actions aside from her constitutionally protected speech,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.