In court testimony, Boston ICE official recalls pressure from above to arrest Rümeysa Öztürk

Boston Globe

4 days ago

'We made it a priority,' Cunningham said.
He also testified that, in the months after President Trump was inaugurated in January, Homeland Security Investigations has been prioritizing immigration arrests more than before, and that 'the prioritization of that work has certainly increased.'
The testimony took place during the seventh day of trial in a lawsuit brought by higher education organizations, including the American Association of University Professors, over the Trump administration's policies of arresting and detaining noncitizen students and others engaged in pro-Palestinian activism.
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Öztürk was
US District Judge William G. Young will decide whether
the lawsuit plaintiffs proved their claims that the administration's effort to revoke the visas of pro-Palestinian protesters and deport them is a violation of their First Amendment rights and the Administrative Procedure Act.
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In court on Tuesday, multiple top ICE officials from the Boston, New England, New York and Washington D.C. offices of Homeland Security Investigations said that in the past six months under Trump, they were told to prioritize immigration enforcement cases, as opposed to criminal cases, which they had previously focused on in the past.
Cunningham acknowledged that prior to this change, he largely had no experience with these kinds of cases.
Cunningham consulted with an attorney from ICE's Office of the Principal Legal Advisor prior to Öztürk's arrest, to make sure that the agency was on 'solid legal ground' in the operation, he said.
Last week, Peter Hatch, an assistant director of an ICE intelligence office, testified that analysts were directed to look at a pro-Israel website for leads on investigating protesters because it contained more than 5,000 names of people who publicly supported the Palestinian cause.
The team looking into the protesters was internally referred to as Tiger Team, Hatch said.
Hatch disclosed that the agency
An attorney for the plaintiffs displayed in court a report on Öztürk, titled 'Report of Analysis,' which was ICE's subject profile of Öztürk. It was the first time the report, which was only partially unveiled, had been disclosed.
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On Tuesday, Cunningham, who said he supervised Öztürk's arrest, told the court that he received an email which included a memo from the Department of State as an attachment, which said that Öztürk's visa had been revoked. The email also included a copy of an op-ed Öztürk co-wrote in the student newspaper calling on Tufts to divest from companies with ties to Israel. He could not remember receiving a similar communication in his time at HSI, he testified. He said that 'there were a lot of hands in fishbowl' in planning for and carrying out the arrest.
In response to questions, Cunningham said he did not see anything in the op-ed that indicated evidence of a crime.
Michael Tremonte, an attorney for the plaintiffs, asked Cunningham if there had been a decision made by top officials to keep Öztürk's visa's revocation a secret from her. 'We did not plan on alerting her to the fact that her visa had been revoked,' Cunningham responded.
On Friday, John Armstrong, a top official in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, which is part of the state department,
also
testified that Öztürk was not informed that her visa was being revoked, on guidance from ICE officials.
'ICE had made a request that we not inform so that they could take action to remove Ms. Öztürk from the United States,' Armstrong said. Armstrong said that the state department typically lets visa holders know that their visa is being revoked.
Cunningham testified that he was the agent who signed the arrest warrant for ICE to ultimately apprehend Öztürk, and that the cause for her arrest was her visa revocation. which would make her in violation of immigration law.
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During Cuningham's testimony, Young, the judge, noted that 'not everyone who has their visa revoked is arrested.'
'I don't think it's at issue whether there was legal authority to take Ms. Öztürk into custody,' Young said. 'The question is a broader question as to the reasons for all that.'
Young said that he was in possession of various documents related to Öztürk's arrest, but that he could not share them with the plaintiffs — along with some documents related to other arrests of students by ICE — because a federal appeals court has ordered they remain sealed, while weighing a petition by the government to declare them privileged information.
On Tuesday, several other ICE agents who were involved in the arrests of students who had expressed Pro-Palestinian views testified, including agents who planned the apprehension of Mahmoud Khalil in New York, Mohsen Mahdawi in Vermont, and Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral scholar and professor at Georgetown University.
The agents testified that supervisors had conveyed to them that the Department of State notified their offices that these scholars were in violation of immigration law, and that resources should be swiftly allocated to locate and eventually arrest them.
Shelley Murphy of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Angela Mathew contributed to this report.
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at