BOSTON — In a declaration filed on Thursday, Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk detailed the day she was detained by ICE officers and says she suffered multiple asthma attacks while in their custody.
The 30-year-old Ph.D student was taken by immigration authorities on March 25 while walking in Somerville. Less than 24 hours later, she was whisked away to an immigration detention facility in Basile, Louisiana after making several stops around New England.
Federal authorities claim she engaged in activities supporting the terrorist group, Hamas, and revoked her visa.
In her own words, Ozturk said when the ICE officers approached her, she believed she was going to be attacked.
“My first thought was that they were not government officials but private individuals who wanted to harm me,” she said. “I felt very scared and concerned as the men surrounded me and grabbed my phone from me.”
Ozturk claims she was talking to her mother at the time and “screamed.”
She says her fear stemmed from her appearance on an anonymously-run doxing website called the Canary Mission in February. She also claims the agents didn’t respond when she asked why she was being arrested.
“After I was put into the car, I asked who they were, where they were taking me to, and they told me I was being arrested but they didn’t say why,” she wrote. “I began to cough as we drove. I asked for my inhaler and to open the window.”
Ozturk went on to detail how she was allegedly shackled by more officers, none of who were women, which she requested. The officers allegedly denied her request to speak with an attorney, and Ozturk described the officers’ demeanor as “scary and harsh.”
The Tufts student was then transported to another stop in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the first of four would-be stops “roughly for 15-20 minutes.”
She says she asked one of the officers if she was physically safe.
“He seemed to feel guilty and said ‘We are not monsters’, ‘We do what the government tells us’,” Ozturk wrote.
The officer reportedly told her they were taking her to Vermont because there were no detention centers in Massachusetts for women.
After leaving Lawrence, Ozturk said she reminded officers she needed her emergency asthma inhaler close by and needed a full meal, breaking her fast.
The officers provided her snacks of crackers and water, “but [she] didn’t drink and eat it because I was worried they could have poisoned it.”
Ozturk said she wanted to speak to her lawyer before eating. “I was afraid that if something happened to me, no one would know where I was,” she wrote.
She was then transported to New Hampshire, then to a detention center in Vermont to spend the night.
Around 4 a.m. on March 26, Ozturk left for the airport to be taken to Louisiana.
“I experienced an asthma attack while I was waiting in the Atlanta airport with ICE,” Ozturk wrote. “I felt like I could not breathe.”
After being transported to the Louisiana facility, which she described as “very unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane,” Ozturk says she sustained a second asthma attack.
“I asked them to let me outside to get some fresh air,” Ozturk wrote. “They said no but let me wait outside of the room in the hallway. While waiting, I still couldn’t breathe well and was crying.”
Ozturk claims when she was finally seen by a nurse, the woman removed her hejab without permission.
She detailed two more asthma attacks while at the Louisiana facility and described the nurses as “insulting and condescending.”
“I pray everyday for my release so I can go back to my home and community in Somerville,” Ozturk wrote.
She concluded her petition about wanting to complete her PhD and return to the Tufts Child Study and Human Development program.
“My plans are to stay in academia and to undertake a post-doc in positive media for youth,” Ozturk wrote.
A hearing for her habeas petition is scheduled in Vermont District Court for Monday, April 14.
[ Mass. Judge moves legal case of detained Turkish Tufts University student to Vermont ]
Her detainment has sparked outrage from supporters, the ACLU, and local delegation.
“It’s deeply un-American and frighteningly similar to what happened under the Nazis to just disappear people,” Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton said at a Tufts University speaking event on April 7. Moulton claims he’s written several letters to the Trump administration but has not heard back.
“This is horrifying not only for the international community in the U.S., but for the international community abroad as well,” said Reyyan Bilge, an assistant teaching professor of psychology at Northeastern University. “If some random guy on the street was not recording her. She would have been gone for a couple of days and we wouldn’t know where she was and that’s really creepy.”
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