SOMERVILLE, MASS. (WHDH) - Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk opened up about her arrest by Homeland Security Agents and the 45 days she spent in a Louisiana detention center.
Immigration officers arrested Ozturk near her Somerville home on March 25, a day after her visa was revoked. Surveillance video shows unidentified ICE agents wearing masks surround her and put her in an unmarked SUV. She was flown to Louisiana the next day where she was held until her release in May.
The Department of Homeland Security said Ozturk supported Hamas, but did not provide any evidence. Her attorneys believe her arrest stems from a pro-Palestinian Op-Ed she co-authored in the Tufts student newspaper last year.
Ozturk published a new account of her experience, writing about her arrest in the “Tufts Daily.”
“Suddenly, I was thrust into a nightmare. Thousands of questions crept up in the hours that passed. It felt like an eternity as my shackled body was jostled from one location to another. Who were these people? Had I been a good enough person if today was my final day?” Ozturk wrote.
Ozturk says when she arrived in Louisiana, she was put in a holding area with other detainees, writing, “The cramped room was filled with women, some lying on the cold floor, others looking scared or simply sad, all in desperate need of food and water. The bathrooms were just curtained stalls. The room itself was frustratingly bright, with hard, uncomfortable benches that added to the tension of the situation.”
Ozturk says the other women she was detained with found themselves lacking proper treatment, even for medicine, and it would take weeks, or even months, to get seen by a medical staff.
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