Palestinian rights advocate Rumeysa Ozturk voluntarily returns to Turkey
Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University student and Palestinian rights advocate who was arrested by masked federal agents in March 2025 has voluntarily returned to her native Turkey after completing her Ph.D. and reaching a settlement agreement with the Trump administration, the ACLU announced Friday.
In January, an immigration judge dismissed removal proceedings against Ozturk after finding that the Department of Homeland Security had failed to prove she was removable. The Trump administration promptly appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
According to a source familiar with the settlement agreement, the government and Ozturk's lawyers are jointly requesting an end to those proceedings.
If the Board of Immigration Appeals accepts the request, Ozturk could theoretically return to the United States if she wishes to do so and obtains a visa, the source said.
Ozturk was detained and held in ICE custody for more than a month before a judge ordered her release last May.
Attorneys representing Ozturk said she was targeted, like other high-profile arrests of students, for her Pro-Palestinian views, specifically for co-authoring an Op-Ed in the Tufts University student newspaper in March 2024 in which she called on the school's administration to take steps to "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide."
Court documents produced in other lawsuits challenging the arrests of pro-Palestinian students indicated that the government used the Op-Ed for the basis of her arrest, her attorneys said.
"After 13 years of dedicated study, I am very proud to have completed my Ph.D. and to return home on my own timeline," Ozturk said in a statement. "The time stolen from me by the U.S. government belongs not just to me, but to the children and youth I have dedicated my life to advocating for."
"With them in mind, 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," her statement said.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, is continuing its efforts to remove several other students who have voiced support for Palestinians, including former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who was recently issued a final order of removal.
