On Tuesday, March 25, ICE agents kidnapped Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk outside her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts. Six masked agents surrounded and handcuffed her as she was leaving her apartment to break fast after observing Ramadan. As of this writing, her whereabouts are unknown, although ICE's inmate locator indicates that, like Mahmoud Khalil, she has already been flown to a concentration camp in Louisiana, despite a habeas petition filed in Massachusetts federal court Tuesday to release her, where a judge ordered that Ozturk not be moved out of state (so much for the "rule of law").

Ozturk is a Turkish national and doctoral candidate in the Department of Child Study and Human Development and a teaching fellow, who works as a doctoral research assistant at Tufts’ Children’s Television Project. She has completed a master’s degree at Teachers College, Columbia University, as a Fulbright Scholar.

As of this report, there has been no contact between Ozturk and her family, friends or attorneys. She has been "disappeared" by ICE, and Tufts administration was told that her student visa has been terminated.

Anger and outrage swirled on the Tufts campus as word spread, and Wednesday night, 2,000 students and community activists came out to an emergency rally called by Coalition for Palestinian Liberation at Tufts and the Palestinian Youth Movement, which had been quickly endorsed and promoted by a wide array of organizations, including 50501, Mass Peace Action and Refuse Fascism. The demand "Free Mahmoud, Free Rumeysa” rang out through the night. Revcoms and members of Refuse Fascism circulating through the crowd called on people attending to join in the emergency rally called in support of Mahmoud Khalil the following day in Harvard Square outside Harvard University, which had been updated to include the demand that Rumeysa also be freed immediately. People were also invited to a special screening of selections of Part One of the The Bob Avakian Interviews, 2025, in Cambridge.

Ozturk's "crime" was that a year ago she coauthored an op-ed in the Tufts Daily demanding that the University administration carry out Tufts Community Union Senate resolutions for the university to acknowledge the genocide of Palestinians taking place in Gaza and divest from Israeli corporations. She was subsequently "doxed” by the Canary Mission, a Zionist/fascist website with the stated purpose to “document people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.”

It's worth taking a moment to think about this—an editorial in a student newspaper calling on a campus administration to carry out the vote of an elected student council is grounds to be arrested, jailed with no due process, or "day in court," lose your student visa, be kept in total isolation not just from your family but legal counsel, and face immediate deportation. This is the kind of climate the Trump MAGA fascist regime and too many administrative collaborators are attempting to instill on the college campuses today. The actions of the Tufts students in response are righteous, and not only do they need to be supported but such actions need to grow, be amplified and reach every part of the country as part of a powerful movement to not only free all the political prisoners that the fascist regime has imprisoned but to drive this regime out altogether.