Mass. lawmakers visit with Rümeysa Öztürk at Louisiana detention facility

Yahoo

23-04-2025

On Tuesday, Massachusetts lawmakers traveled to a Louisiana detention center where Tufts University student Rümeysa Özt​​ürk has been detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents since late March and called for her freedom.
'If anyone is tempted to marginalize who they are coming for ... to say, 'That's happening to them, but not I,' — it could be you tomorrow," U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-7th District, said.
She stood alongside Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-2nd District. Democratic U.S. Reps. Troy Carter of Louisiana and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, joined them.
'They are setting the foundational floor to violate the due process and free free speech of every person who calls this country home, whatever your status is,' Pressley, of Boston, said.
Öztürk, a 30-year-old Turkish national and fifth-year doctoral student studying child development, was taken from the streets of Somerville by six ICE agents while on her on her way to break a Ramadan fast.
Overnight, she was whisked to New Hampshire, then to Vermont, and ultimately brought to an all-women detention facility in Louisiana.
Öztürk was detained because of an op-ed she co-authored in the Tufts' student newspaper about the war in Gaza, but has not been charged with any crimes.
A series of court proceedings followed Öztürk's detainment, driven by her lawyers' argument her constitutional right to free speech has been violated. On Friday, a federal court judge ordered that her case be moved back to Vermont.
But the Department of Justice filed an appeal against this motion on Tuesday, according to multiple reports — the latest punch thrown, right as Markey, Pressley and McGovern, of Worcester, made their way back to the commonwealth on Wednesday.
Oustide the prison in Louisiana, the lawmakers called for the release of Öztürk and of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student also detained by ICE officials.
After visiting with Öztürk, the lawmakers said the prison conditions were cruel, with detainees denied proper nutrition, medical care and proper sleeping arrangements.
'We're here at a prison that makes money on what it can save by not providing for the prisoners who are inside,' Markey said.
'It's not just the truncation of constitutional rights — the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment — but it's also the fundamental compromise of human dignity, which these prisoners have to suffer every single day.
Despite this, Öztürk 'continues to have a spirit' and 'a sense of right that fuels her very being,' Markey said.
Pressley named several 'tools' the lawmakers plan to use: the Constitution, the courts and the community.
'We will use every tool we have in the courts to continue to file lawsuits, to continue to press the judicial system to do their jobs, to recognize the Constitution, to recognize the separation of powers,' Pressley said.
'And we will continue to work with the community... We are not going to sit idly by and watch our country taken away from us,' Pressley said.
The lawmakers said they will give a full update on their visit to Louisiana at a press conference at Boston Logan International Airport on Wednesday morning.
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Warren calls on State Dept. to release memo on Rümeysa Özturk's detention
Federal judge in Vermont considering whether to take up Tufts student's case