By Kathy McCormack
A doctoral student at TUFTS University of Turkey demands her release after she was detained by immigration officials near her home in Massachusetts, detailing how she was afraid when the men caught her phone and feared that she was killed.
Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, who has since been transferred to an immigration detention center and customs application in Basile, Louisiana, provided a updated report of what happened to her when she walked on a street on March 25, in a document deposited by her lawyers before the Federal Court on Thursday.
Ozturk is one of several people related to American universities whose visas have been revoked or have been prevented from entering the United States after being accused of having attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support to the Palestinians. On Friday, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that the United States can expel the student graduate from Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil, based on the federal government’s argument that he presents a risk of national security.
‘I felt very frightened and worried’
“I felt very frightened and worried when the men surrounded me and grabbed my phone,” Ozturk said in the statement. They told him that they were from the police, and one quickly showed what could have been a gold insignia. “But I didn’t think they were the police because I had never seen the police approach and take someone like that,” she said.
Ozturk said that she was afraid because her name, photography and work story were published earlier this year on the Canary Mission website, which describes themselves as a documentary people who “promote hatred of the United States, Israel and Jews on the North American campuses of the college”.
She said that the men did not tell her why they would stop her and chained her. She said at one point, after changing cars, she felt “sure they were going to kill me.” During a stop in the Massachusetts, one of the men said to him: “We are not monsters” and “we do what the government tells us”.
She said they had repeatedly refused her requests to speak to a lawyer.
Audience provided for in the case of Ozturk in Vermont
A petition to release it was deposited for the first time before a Federal Tribunal in Boston, then moved to Burlington, Vermont, where an audience on its case to solve the jurisdiction problems is scheduled for Monday.
Ozturk lawyers say that his detention violates his constitutional rights, in particular freedom of expression and regular procedure. They asked for her to be released from the guard.
Lawyers from the United States Ministry say that his case in New England should be rejected and that he should be treated before the immigration court. Ozturk “is not without recourse to contest the revocation of his visa and his arrest and his detention, but such a challenge cannot be taken up before this court,” said government lawyers in a memory deposited on Thursday.
She recalled that the night she had spent in the Vermont cell, she was asked to want to ask for asylum and if she was a member of a terrorist organization. “I tried to be useful and answer their questions, but I was so tired and I didn’t understand what happened to me,” she said.
Ozturk, who suffers from asthma, had an attack the next day at Atlanta airport, when she was taken to Louisiana, she said. She was able to use her inhaler, but unable to obtain her prescribed medications because there was no room to buy it, she said.
Ozturk says she was not left outside for a week
Once she was placed in the installation of Louisiana, she was not allowed to go out during the first week and had limited access to food and supplies for two weeks. She said that she had undergone three other asthma attacks there and had limited care in a medical center.
Ozturk said she was one of the 24 people in a cell that has a sign indicating the capacity of 14.
“When they make the number of detainees, we are threatened not to leave our beds or we will lose privileges, which means that we are often stuck in our beds for hours,” she said. “At meals, there is so much anxiety because there is no schedule when it happens. … They threaten to close the door if we do not leave the room in time, which means that we will not have a meal.”
Ozturk said she wanted to go back to Tufts so that she can finish her diploma, on which she has been working for five years.
Ozturk was one of the four students who wrote an editorial in the Campus Journal, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to militant students demanding that Tofts “recognize the Palestinian genocide”, disclose its investments and unfold companies related to Israel.
A main spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Security said that the federal authorities had arrested Ozturk after an investigation revealed that she had “exercised Hamas support, a foreign terrorist organization that savor the murder of the Americans”. The ministry did not provide proof of this support.
Ozturk is supported by the coalition of Jewish groups
A coalition of 27 Jewish organizations from all the United States is opposed to the arrest and detention of Ozturk.
The organizations say that these actions and the possible deportation of Ozturk for his protected speech “violates the most fundamental constitutional rights”, as freedom of expression.
“The government … seems to exploit the legitimate concerns of Jewish Americans concerning anti -Semitism as a pretext to undermine the main pillars of American democracy, the rule of law and the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and an academic debate on which this nation was built”, according to groups, in a friend of freedom of the field, a brief was filed on Friday in his case.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
