Immigration officials have arrested a Turkish student for supporting the Hamas terror outfit that notoriously attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
It appears that Rumeysa Ozturk’s days as a graduate student at Boston’s Tuft University are numbered. The government revoked her visa, which means she must leave the country.
Arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as she was about to meet friends, Ozturk crossed the line, officials say, when she backed Hamas terrorists “who kill Americans.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that studying in the United States is a privilege, not a right, and that a foreigner who “tears up our campuses” will lose his visa and be removed.
The Arrest
ICE arrested the Muslim in the sanctuary city of Somerville, Massachusetts, Fox News’s Bill Melugin reported. In December, to poke newly elected President Donald Trump in the eye, the city voted to “reaffirm its sanctuary status,” Melugin noted.
Citing her attorney, Reuters reported that Ozturk “was heading to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast,” when “masked and plainclothes” ICE agents arrested her. The arrest came a year after she and other students published an op-ed in the The Tufts Daily that implored the university to “disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.” The piece also said “credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.”
“Rumesya Ozturk is a Turkish national & Tufts University graduate student, granted the privilege to be in this country on a visa,” wrote Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security:
DHS + ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.
A visa is a privilege not a right.
Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security.
The Trump administration, as Reuters noted, has been tracking foreign students who sympathize with terror groups.
“Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and lawful permanent resident, was similarly arrested,” Reuters observed, and ICE also wants to detain a South Korean who attends Columbia University. “He is challenging his detention after Trump, without evidence, accused him of supporting Hamas, which Khalil denies,” Reuters reported:
A Lebanese doctor and assistant professor at Brown University in Rhode Island was denied re-entry to the U.S. this month and deported to Lebanon after the Trump administration alleged that her phone contained photos “sympathetic” to Hezbollah. Dr. Rasha Alawieh said she does not support the militant group but held regard for its slain leader because of her religion.
The Trump administration, Reuters noted, has “targeted students” at Cornell and Georgetown universities and the University of Alabama.
As The New American’s Veronika Kyrylenko reported of Khalil, authorities “accused him of ‘antisemitic’ activity, a term that, under Trump’s new executive order … includes organizing protests critical of Israel’s military actions.”
Warned Trump on Truth Social:
This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators.
In 2024, pro-Palestinian “protesters” took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia. New York City cops arrested them. Most were not students, reports on X said.
Rubio Explains
Speaking to reporters, Rubio explained that studying in the United States as a foreigner is not “right” but instead a privilege.
“We revoked her visa … and here’s why.… Let me be abundantly clear,” Rubio began:
If you apply for a visa to enter to the United States and be a student and you tell us that the reason why you’re coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not gonna give you a visa.
And if you “lie to us” to get the visa and do those things, he warned, the visa will be revoked, which means “you’re no longer legally in the United States.” That means the former visa holder must leave or be deported.
“We gave you a visa to come and study, and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses,” he continued:
And if we’ve given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we’re gonna take it away.… It’s crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it. We’re just not gonna have it. So, we’ll revoke your visa, and once your visa’s revoked, you’re illegally in the country and you have to leave.
All countries, he said, have a right to decide who enters.
Rubio likened the situation to inviting someone into home:
If you invite me into your home and … I start putting mud on your couch and spray painting your kitchen, I betcha you’re going to kick me out. Well, we’re gonna do the same thing if you’re coming to the United States as a visitor and create a ruckus for us. We don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country. But you’re not going to do it in our country.
