Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University medical graduate student from Turkey whose charges were dropped after DHS detained her for allegedly “[engaging] in activities in support of Hamas,” has self-deported to Turkey, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Flight to Istanbul ends case in U.S.
Ozturk self-deported from the U.S.
late Thursday night on a flight to Istanbul, Turkey, according to sources familiar.
It’s the kind of detail that usually comes in after the fact—like someone mentioning the exact moment their phone stopped buzzing, or maybe that’s just how it feels when you hear it.
The move caps off a months-long legal fight that started after ICE detained her in Somerville, Massachusetts, in March 2025.
From there, the story turned into a battle between the Trump administration and a federal judge over her detention.
Her situation then ran straight into the government’s changing stance on student visas.
According to the reporting, Ozturk had been living in the U.S.
on an F-1 student visa, which the Trump administration revoked around March 21, 2025.
At the time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration were cracking down on student visas for students who were involved in protests and demonstrations regarding Israel and Palestine.
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.
She added that “the time stolen from me by the U.S.
government belongs not just to me,” and said the decision to return home was made “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.”
Op-ed history and visa fight
Her statement also referenced the sense of being punished for speech, saying she was returning “all for nothing more than co-signing an op-ed advocating for Palestinian rights.” The document she pointed to is not new: Ozturk co-authored an opinion piece on March 26, 2024 that was published in Tufts Daily, a student newspaper on campus.
That op-ed included claims that “Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide,” and it criticized the university’s response to anti-Israel protests.
The authors, including Ozturk, said the university should publicly acknowledge Palestinian suffering.
Rubio later referenced opinion pieces in a statement surrounding the revoking of student visas, notably after the arrest of Ozturk on March 25, 2025.
As part of that broader argument, Rubio said: “If you apply for a visa to enter 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 going to give you a visa.”
In the days that followed, the Trump Department of Justice weighed in on her departure.
A DOJ official told Misryoum that “Attending elite colleges and universities in the United States is a privilege afforded to foreign students who respect our values and follow our laws,” and said Ozturk chose not to abide by those conditions.
The timeline of custody also stayed in the public record as the case unfolded.
Following Ozturk’s arrest, she was transferred to Methuen, Mass., then Lebanon, New Hampshire, and Vermont before she was sent to the South Louisiana ICE processing facility, according to reports.
Protests erupted at Tufts and across the country over her arrest, and two months later she was released on bail.
Her legal battle continued with representation by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) until Feb.
9, when Biden-appointed Boston immigration Judge Roopal Patel terminated deportation proceedings.
Patel ruled that the Department of Homeland Security lacked the legal grounds to deport her.
In a statement released by her attorneys after the ruling, Ozturk said she grieved “for the many human beings who do not get to see the mistreatment they have faced brought into the light,” and called the situation an “injustices around us,” including treatment of immigrants and others targeted and thrown into for-profit ICE prisons.
After Patel ruled as an immigration judge and not a federal Article III judge, the Trump administration and the executive branch has authority over her tenure—so the fight didn’t really end the way people hoped.
The Trump Department of Justice fired Patel, among other immigration judges, last week.
And the White House issued a press release on April 9 titled: “Era of Amnesty Is Over: President Trump Restores Rule of Law to Immigration Courts,” describing “the most aggressive and successful immigration enforcement overhaul in modern history.”
In the end, Ozturk’s self-deportation suggests the legal question has shifted from the courtroom to the airport—though the political questions, the protests, the arguments over visas and speech, they’re not exactly something you can file away.
Not sure they ever really stop, not fully, and not overnight.
Takano Spars With RFK Jr. Over Trump’s Mental Health