New court documents confirm US arrested PhD student over op-ed critical of Israel not 'supporting terrorism'

New US court documents confirmed that US President Donald Trump’s administration arrested a PhD student over an opinion article she penned that was critical of Israel, rather than supporting terrorist activity, as was claimed at the time.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, was detained in March by plainclothes immigration officers while she was walking in Massachusetts and later held for over six weeks in a detention centre in Louisiana.

The article she co-authored called on her university to "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide", and criticised the institution’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed at least 71,000 Palestinians.

A State Department memo said her student visa was revoked after it was found that her actions "may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organisation".

At the time, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told reporters that investigations carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that Ozturk "engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organisation that relishes the killing of Americans".

The newly disclosed documents, however, reaffirm that DHS and ICE did not find that Ozturk had engaged in antisemitic behaviour or made public statements supporting a terrorist organisation.

The State Department memos further reveal that the US administration struggled to find any evidence to justify revoking Ozturk’s visa, despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio approving her deportation.

Ozturk’s lawyers have long argued that her arrest and detention were unlawfully designed to punish her for speech protected by the US Constitution's First Amendment and to stop others from speaking out.

The US State Department memo also said that the administration arrested and recommended deporting at least four other pro-Palestinian people over their participation in protests on campus and writing content that criticises Israel’s war on Gaza.

One of those individuals is Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested in March 2025 and continues to face a legal battle to remain in the US. Others included Badr Khan Suri, Yunseo Chung, and Mohsen Mahdawi.

Another finding in the newly released documents reveals that, in some cases, the US administration doubted whether the deportations were justifiable and could hold up in court due to laws protecting free speech.

 Last May, the Trump administration was ordered by a US district judge for Massachusetts to release Ozturk, with the judge stating that "continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens".

Last year, Ozturk told reports that while she was grateful for the court’s decision, she had felt a "great deal of grief", adding that she had been “arbitrarily denied as a scholar and a woman in my final year of doctoral studies".

"I hope one day we can create a world where everyone uses education to learn, connect, civically engage and benefit others – rather than criminalise and punish those whose opinions differ from our own," she said.