‘It's really scary:' Students, residents react to sudden arrest of Tufts student

Boston Globe

26-03-2025

'It hits closer to home, definitely,' said Elliott Riseman, a freshman. 'It's right at home.'
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In this image taken from security camera video, Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Tufts University, is detained by Department of Homeland Security agents on a street in Somerville on Tuesday.
Uncredited/Associated Press
Ozturk's attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, said she has not been able to contact her. A federal judge in Boston ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to remove Ozturk from Massachusetts on Tuesday without prior notice.
It was unclear Wednesday why Ozturk was detained. She had voiced support for the pro-Palestinian movement at Tufts, but was not known as a prominent leader. Her lawyer said she is not aware of any charges against her.
Ellis Bedsworth, an undergraduate student at Tufts, said she read the email notifying students about the detainment Tuesday night.
'It's scary, and it's really sad that it's happening,' she said while studying in the Mayer Campus Center Wednesday morning. 'It feels really far away until it happens here, and it's hard to know how to help.'
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While Bedsworth said she was impressed by the speed with which Tufts notified students of the arrest, another student, Charlie Koenig, said he wished the email said more.
'The email Tufts sent last night was softly worded for what the situation is,' he said. 'And [the university] is not doing enough to stop it.'
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Monish Aswani, a 19-year-old sophomore economics major who is from Hong Kong, said his visa concerns had been temporarily assuaged after he managed to reenter the country after spring break without incident, but the arrest of Ozturk brought those worries back to the top of his mind.
'Knowing that I'm an international student as well, and maybe this could happen to me, is quite frightening,' he said.
Aswani said he understood if students were being removed for violating the terms of their visas, or if their acts of protest went too far. But he added that, from what he'd seen of the demonstrations on Tufts' campus last year, they were relatively benign.
'People come from different places, they have different cultures, they have different identities, and they stand for different things,' he said. 'And university is a place where you come together and you share these ideas, so you're able to communicate freely and share your experiences and learn from others.'
'Not being able to do that does take a toll on people,' he added. 'The government taking serious actions, deporting kids back to their home nations, seems like a step too far.'
Aswani noted his background in Hong Kong, a territory subject to harsh restrictions on free speech by the Chinese government. That situation is unique, he said, but he acknowledged that Ozturk's arrest made for a worrying parallel.
'Someone who's coming from, for example, Hong Kong, would think that coming into the US, they would have some sort of freedom,' he said. 'Being able to do what they want, say what they want, protest and stand for what they stand for.'
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Adriana Callen, a Tufts senior who lives in the area where the arrest took place, said she had noticed cars loitering in the area on Wednesday afternoon.
'We didn't even put it together until hours later,' she said. 'So it definitely was quite shocking. I wasn't even honestly sure until right now.'
When she first heard the news of what had happened, she said she was 'appalled.'
'I don't even know how to react,' she added.
Callen said she didn't know Ozturk, but that many of her international student friends who live in the area had expressed fears about going to classes on campus.
'People have a right to address problems that they see, problems in the world, problems everywhere,' she said. 'We need to make sure everyone is able to express opinions, and that people shouldn't have to fear their safety in order to do so.'
Joe Ferraro, 48, said he's lived in the same house on Mason Street for his entire life. It's a quiet neighborhood of spacious triple deckers, which is populated by as many families as it is college students — many of them, he noted, from other states, countries, and 'all over the place.'
'I live next door to a college,' he said. 'There's new, young people walking up and down this street all the time. The subway is over there, the college is over there. This neighborhood is full of people her age all the time, and different ones all the time, every couple of years.'
Neighbor Joe Ferraro gestures to where the arrest happened as he spoke to reporters on his porch Wednesday.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
He wasn't at home when the arrest occurred, he said. But his parents, both in their 70s, had noticed a car with several people inside idling out front for around six hours. They were thinking of calling the police, he said, when the arrest happened.
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When shown a video of the arrest, Ferraro became visibly emotional.
'It's too much,' he said. 'I don't need to live in a place where people get plucked off the street like that, just walking around. That's bananas. That's just insane.'
'I don't care what she was doing,' Ferraro continued. 'You can't just nab people off the sidewalk and throw them in a car and take them away, and expect anyone who's seen it to be alright afterwards.'
The sudden arrest has shattered the sense of calm on the residential street. After seeing the footage of plainclothes ICE agents emerging from their unmarked cars, Ferraro said he is now on edge for anyone loitering in the area.
'Now every guy in normal clothes that's hanging around here, that's what I'm going to think,' he said.
Ferraro added that even his son, after hearing the news, is now afraid that his high school friends may be at risk.
'Half the kids he knows are terrified their parents will get taken off the street,' he said.
'Part of me is afraid to talk about it,' he said. 'But come pluck me off the sidewalk then, if that's what you get for talking about it.'
One international Tufts graduate student who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation said when she read the university's email, she wasn't concerned so much about herself as she was about the 'state of this country.'
'This is just a sign of the times, and it's probably not going to end well,' she said while studying in the Collaborative Learning and Innovation Complex Wednesday morning.
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'It makes me wonder if I made the right choice coming here,' she said, adding she's thought about leaving but she 'doesn't know how bad it has to get' for her to make that decision.
'I know [Ozturk] had connections to the Palestine protests, and that makes me very cautious in participating in anything because you don't want to have your name out there any more,' she added.
Nick Stoico can be reached at