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The Herald Scotland
04-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Texas signs school choice law. Will it expand educational vouchers?
Students who apply for and receive a scholarship will get about $10,500 to pay for tuition at an alternative school and students with disabilities will receive up to $30,000. Texas's universal school choice program comes months after President Donald Trump directed multiple federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Education to prioritize school choice programs. The passage of universal school choice in Texas marks the end of a three-decade-long saga in which state Republicans have repeatedly rejected the idea of using public funds to pay for alternative schools, said Luis Huerta, a professor of education and public policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. From a national lens, Huerta, who researches school choice across the U.S., doesn't consider the change of heart in Texas to be a "watershed moment" for popularity in the school choice movement because voters in three states rejected school choice measures in the Nov. 2024 election before Trump re-entered federal office. But Texas's switch up on school choice could mean the Trump administration's growing pressure on states to implement the idea gains some momentum, Huerta said. Trump congratulated one of the authors of the bill, Lieutenant Gov. Don Patrick, for what he called "the biggest launch of a school choice program in American History." "What is important nationally is the direct lobbying that came from the federal government and directly from the Trump admin in threatening many Republicans who were reluctant to vote for this," Huerta said. Huerta referred to news reports of Trump and Elon Musk pressuring the Texas House to pass the program. Longtime school voucher program opponents argue that universal school choice programs benefit wealthy families who are already enrolled in private or other alternative schools, and who already can afford them. Kids whose families receive state funding for school through choice programs are given additional resources, which, they say, can widen the achievement gap with low-income communities or students with disabilities. Others argue that school choice programs strip crucial state funding from public schools that need it. Advocates for public schools in Texas's rural areas have argued that state funding should stay with public schools. They say school choice programs don't benefit families who live in rural areas like they do families who live in urban areas. They say other school options are often inaccessible. Homeschooling group often reject the idea of state-funded subsidies because they fear it invites government regulation on homeschooling. Nevertheless, supporters are calling the Texas law a major win for the school choice movement. What it means for students and schools: School choice remains popular following COVID closures School choice in Texas and beyond Texas is part of a growing number of Republican-led states that have passed school choice programs since the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, some parents withdrew their kids from their neighborhood schools and put them in private schools, charter schools homeschooling and other alternatives when their campuses closed and pivoted to remote learning. Many families kept their kids enrolled in alternative schooling options after neighborhoods public schools reopened and returned to in-person learning. Why parents who moved kids To alternative schools amid pandemic are keeping them there Supporters of the national school choice movement are now touting Texas as another win. At least 35 states and Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico have some school choice program, according to a national school choice dashboard from the group EdChoice. These programs include education savings accounts, charter schools and vouchers specifically for private schools. School choice existed in Texas before the passage of this latest bill through charter schools and district-to-district transfer options. The expansion of school choice in Texas is reminiscent of school choice wins in GOP-led states like Tennessee and Wyoming, said Shelby Doyle, a vice president of public awareness for the pro-school choice organization National School Choice Awareness Foundation. Both states passed universal school choice laws this year, allowing families who live there to use public funds for nonpublic schools. School choice expansion in the Lone State will give current and future generations of students more options on where they go to school, she said. "When I think about this new private school choice program, it's really the end of the debate on whether school choice is going to be the new normal," Doyle said. It's still unclear whether there will be enough spots in private schools or other schooling options for kids who aren't already enrolled, said Huerta from Teacher's College, Columbia University. There's often a problem with supply and demand on the logistics end of universal school choice programs, he said. "The fear then is that when a voucher comes along, all of a sudden this becomes an attractive option for families," Huerta said. "There's a flood of people who want to leave public schools and go to private, but there's not enough capacity." 'Texas has long been one of the largest holdouts' in school choice movement School choice proponents argue that Texas's pivot to universal school choice is a win for the movement. They predict the state's program will be especially influential on the nation because of the number of families it will be able to reach given the large pot of money the state has allocated to help kids move from neighborhood public schools. Texas House gives initial OK To $1B school voucher proposal, rejects call for referendum Robert Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice, called Gov. Abbott's signature of the bill making the universal school choice program official "a monumental step forward for parental empowerment and student opportunity--not just for Texas, but for the nation." "Texas has long been one of the largest holdouts on educational freedom, offering no school choice programs--until now," Enlow said. Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@ Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
USA Today
03-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Texas Gov. Abbott signs school vouchers into law. What we know about the school choice bill
Texas Gov. Abbott signs school vouchers into law. What we know about the school choice bill Show Caption Hide Caption Trump signs order on school choice and funding President Donald Trump has signed two executive orders on school funding that fulfill promises he made on the campaign trail. Fox - 32 Chicago Families in Texas are now among a growing number of states who can use public funds to pay for a nonpublic education, including private schools and homeschooling. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on May 3 signed a school choice bill into law, allocating $1 billion for about 100,000 students to use for alternative schooling tuition or other educational purposes. The money can be used to pay for textbooks, academic tests, transportation to school, computers and meals during the school day. Students who apply for and receive a scholarship will get about $10,500 to pay for tuition at an alternative school and students with disabilities will receive up to $30,000. Texas's universal school choice program comes months after President Donald Trump directed multiple federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Education to prioritize school choice programs. The passage of universal school choice in Texas marks the end of a three-decade-long saga in which state Republicans have repeatedly rejected the idea of using public funds to pay for alternative schools, said Luis Huerta, a professor of education and public policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. From a national lens, Huerta, who researches school choice across the U.S., doesn't consider the change of heart in Texas to be a "watershed moment" for popularity in the school choice movement because voters in three states rejected school choice measures in the Nov. 2024 election before Trump re-entered federal office. But Texas's switch up on school choice could mean the Trump administration's growing pressure on states to implement the idea gains some momentum, Huerta said. Trump congratulated one of the authors of the bill, Lieutenant Gov. Don Patrick, for what he called "the biggest launch of a school choice program in American History." "What is important nationally is the direct lobbying that came from the federal government and directly from the Trump admin in threatening many Republicans who were reluctant to vote for this," Huerta said. Huerta referred to news reports of Trump and Elon Musk pressuring the Texas House to pass the program. Longtime school voucher program opponents argue that universal school choice programs benefit wealthy families who are already enrolled in private or other alternative schools, and who already can afford them. Kids whose families receive state funding for school through choice programs are given additional resources, which, they say, can widen the achievement gap with low-income communities or students with disabilities. Others argue that school choice programs strip crucial state funding from public schools that need it. Advocates for public schools in Texas's rural areas have argued that state funding should stay with public schools. They say school choice programs don't benefit families who live in rural areas like they do families who live in urban areas. They say other school options are often inaccessible. Homeschooling group often reject the idea of state-funded subsidies because they fear it invites government regulation on homeschooling. Nevertheless, supporters are calling the Texas law a major win for the school choice movement. What it means for students and schools: School choice remains popular following COVID closures School choice in Texas and beyond Texas is part of a growing number of Republican-led states that have passed school choice programs since the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, some parents withdrew their kids from their neighborhood schools and put them in private schools, charter schools homeschooling and other alternatives when their campuses closed and pivoted to remote learning. Many families kept their kids enrolled in alternative schooling options after neighborhoods public schools reopened and returned to in-person learning. Why parents who moved kids To alternative schools amid pandemic are keeping them there Supporters of the national school choice movement are now touting Texas as another win. At least 35 states and Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico have some school choice program, according to a national school choice dashboard from the group EdChoice. These programs include education savings accounts, charter schools and vouchers specifically for private schools. School choice existed in Texas before the passage of this latest bill through charter schools and district-to-district transfer options. The expansion of school choice in Texas is reminiscent of school choice wins in GOP-led states like Tennessee and Wyoming, said Shelby Doyle, a vice president of public awareness for the pro-school choice organization National School Choice Awareness Foundation. Both states passed universal school choice laws this year, allowing families who live there to use public funds for nonpublic schools. School choice expansion in the Lone State will give current and future generations of students more options on where they go to school, she said. "When I think about this new private school choice program, it's really the end of the debate on whether school choice is going to be the new normal," Doyle said. It's still unclear whether there will be enough spots in private schools or other schooling options for kids who aren't already enrolled, said Huerta from Teacher's College, Columbia University. There's often a problem with supply and demand on the logistics end of universal school choice programs, he said. "The fear then is that when a voucher comes along, all of a sudden this becomes an attractive option for families," Huerta said. "There's a flood of people who want to leave public schools and go to private, but there's not enough capacity." 'Texas has long been one of the largest holdouts' in school choice movement School choice proponents argue that Texas's pivot to universal school choice is a win for the movement. They predict the state's program will be especially influential on the nation because of the number of families it will be able to reach given the large pot of money the state has allocated to help kids move from neighborhood public schools. Texas House gives initial OK To $1B school voucher proposal, rejects call for referendum Robert Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice, called Gov. Abbott's signature of the bill making the universal school choice program official "a monumental step forward for parental empowerment and student opportunity—not just for Texas, but for the nation." 'Texas has long been one of the largest holdouts on educational freedom, offering no school choice programs—until now,' Enlow said. Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@ Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
Miami Herald
14-04-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
International students may be among the biggest early beneficiaries of ChatGPT
The public release of ChatGPT in November 2022 changed the world. A chatbot could instantly write paragraphs and papers, a task once thought to be uniquely human. Though it may take many years to understand the full consequences, a team of data scientists wanted to study how college writing might already be affected. The researchers were able to gain access to all the online discussion board comments submitted by college students at an unidentified large public university before and after ChatGPT to compare how student writing quality changed. These are typically low-stakes homework assignments where a professor might ask students to post their thoughts on a reading assignment in, say, psychology or biology. The posts could be as short as a sentence or as long as a few paragraphs, but not full essays or papers. These short homework assignments are often ungraded or loosely factored into a student's class participation. The scientists didn't actually read all 1,140,328 discussion-board submissions written by 16,791 students between the fall term of 2021 and the winter term of 2024. As specialists in analyzing big data sets, the researchers fed the posts into seven different computer models that analyze writing quality, from vocabulary to syntax to readability. Ultimately, they created a single composite index of writing quality in which all the submissions were ranked on this single yardstick. The results? Overall student writing quality improved. The improvement was slow at first in the early months of 2023 and then it improved substantially from October 2023 until the study period ended in March 2024. Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms. "I think we can infer this is due to the availability of AI because what other things would produce these significant changes?" said Renzhe Yu, an assistant professor of educational data mining at Teachers College, Columbia University, who led the research. Yu's paper has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but a draft has been publicly posted on a website at Cornell University that hosts pre-publication drafts of scholarly work. (The Hechinger Report is an independent news organization at Teachers College, Columbia University.) Yu and his research colleagues didn't interview any of the students and cannot say for certain that the students were using ChatGPT or any of its competitors, such as Claude or Gemini, to help them with their assignments. But the improvement in student writing following the introduction of ChatGPT does seem to be more than just a random coincidence. Big upswings for international students The unidentified university is a minority serving institution with a large number of Hispanic students who were raised speaking Spanish at home and a large number of international students who are non-native English speakers. And it was these students, whom the researchers classified as "linguistically disadvantaged," who saw the biggest upswings in writing quality after the advent of ChatGPT. Students who entered college with weak writing skills, a metric that the university tracks, also saw outsized gains in their writing quality after ChatGPT. Meanwhile, stronger English speakers and those who entered college with stronger writing abilities saw smaller improvements in their writing quality. It's unclear if they're using ChatGPT less, or if the bot offers less dramatic improvement for a student who is already writing fairly well. The gains for "linguistically disadvantaged" students were so strong after the fall of 2023 that the gap in writing quality between these students and stronger English speakers completely evaporated and sometimes reversed. In other words, the writing quality for students who didn't speak English at home and those who entered college with weak writing skills was sometimes even stronger than that of students who were raised speaking English at home and those who entered college with stronger writing abilities. Gains concentrated among high-income students However, these gains in writing quality among the "linguistically disadvantaged" were concentrated among higher income students. The researchers were able to match students' writing submissions with administrative data on students, including their family income, and they noticed that the writing of low-income students whose parents did not attend college didn't improve quite so much. By contrast, the writing of high-income international students with college educated parents transformed markedly. That's a sign that low-income students weren't using ChatGPT quite so much or not as effectively. Socioeconomic differences in how students benefit from technology aren't uncommon. Previous studies of word processing software, for example, have found that higher income students tend to be more facile in taking advantage of editing features and see greater writing benefits from the ability to cut and paste and move text around. Related: AI writing feedback 'better than I thought,' top researcher says Mark Warschauer is a professor of education at University of California, Irvine, and director of its Digital Learning Lab, where he studies the use of technology in education. Warschauer was not involved with this study and he said he suspects that the lopsided benefits for higher income students will be fleeting as low-income students become more acclimated and more facile with AI over time. "We often see with new technologies that high-income people get access first, but then it balances out. I believe that low-income people use cell phones and social media as much as high income people in the U.S.," he said. But he predicts that the substantial and larger improvements in writing for international students, far greater than for domestic students, will be "more important and durable." Of course, this improved writing quality doesn't mean that these international students are actually learning to write better, but it does indicate that they're adept at using technology to present ideas in well-written English. Related: AI essay grading is already as 'good as an overburdened' teacher, but researchers say it needs more work The study's researchers didn't analyze the ideas, the quality of analysis or if the student submissions made any sense. And it's unclear if the students fed the reading into the chatbot along with the professor's question and simply copied and pasted the chatbot's answer into the discussion board, or if students actually did the reading themselves, typed out some preliminary ideas and just asked the chatbot to polish their writing In Yu's own classes at Teachers College, he said he encourages students to use ChatGPT in their writing assignments as long as they acknowledge it and also submit transcripts of their conversations with the AI chatbot. In practice, he said, only a few students admit to using it. He noticed that student writing in his classes had been improving until now. "This year has actually been horrible," he said. More and more of his students have been submitting typical AI output that "seems reasonable but doesn't make a lot of sense," he said. "It all comes down to motivation," said Yu. "If they're not motivated to learn, then students will only make a bad use of whatever the technology is." Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@ This story about the ChatGPT writing was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters. The post International students may be among the biggest early beneficiaries of ChatGPT appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A Tufts student was on her way to dinner with friends. Then an ICE officer in disguise detained her
Rumeysa Ozturk was on her way to an Iftar dinner to break Ramadan fast with her friends when a man in a black hooded sweatshirt approached her and grabbed her wrists. She screamed. Another man in a ball cap and hooded sweatshirt then walked behind her, pulling out a badge from under his hoodie before grabbing Ozturk's phone from her hand. Other plain-clothes agents surrounded her with neck gaiters covering their faces, according to footage of her arrest near her apartment in Massachusetts. Of the six agents who surrounded her, all but one wore masks. 'Can I just call the cops?' she can be heard saying. 'We are the police,' one agent said before removing her backpack and placing her in handcuffs. Her arrest — captured in full view of a surveillance camera on March 25 — has sent chills among student activists and civil rights groups after a string of similar incidents targeting international students for their Palestinian advocacy. Ozturk is a student at Tuft University's doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development. She graduated with a master's degree from the Teachers College at Columbia University, according to her LinkedIn. 'I am passionate about researching children's and adolescents' digital media and technologies for caring, kind, and compassionate media environments,' she writes. 'As an interdisciplinary media researcher and developmental scientist in training, I research children's and adolescents' positive development in a media-embedded, globalized, and connected world.' A profile from Columbia's Teachers College says her research interests include 'representation in children's television, media literacy, and prosocial development.' She also co-founded an independent children's media initiative in Istanbul and, in her free time, she enjoys 'reading picture books, hiking, baking (without recipes), and binge-watching cartoons and animations.' 'My graduate studies ... have been rewarding not only by providing a strong foundation in developmental science but also because it initiated the beginnings of friendships with a wonderful team of colloquies and international friends,' she said at the time. 'I will always remember the inspiration, innovation, and a shared passion for education and child development that surrounded me at Teachers College.' Last year, in response to Israel's ongoing devastation of Gaza, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily newspaper calling on the university to divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel in an effort to hold Israel accountable 'for clear violations of international law.' 'Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide,' the op-ed says. The op-ed was written by four students and endorsed by 32 others. Ozturk is among dozens of students and professors identified by Canary Mission, a pro-Israel campaign that maintains a database intended to blacklist and intimidate activists the group accuses of promoting 'hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews.' The op-ed appears to be the group's only alleged evidence against her. Canary Mission appeared to take credit for her arrest on March 27, writing that 'sources point to her Canary Mission profile as the primary cause.' A statement from the Department of Homeland Security claimed Ozturk 'engaged in activities in support of Hamas' — designated as a terrorist group behind the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked its retaliatory campaign in Gaza — but did not provide evidence of the allegations against her. 'Rumeysa has been my student, colleague, friend for over a decade,' Northeastern University psychologist Reyyan Bilge wrote. '[D]oes not carry a hateful bone in her body let alone being antisemitic. I wholeheartedly vouch for her and unless we speak up, these horrific events will continue to happen!' Ozturk's attorney filed a petition of habeas corpus challenging her arrest and detention. Massachusetts District Judge Indira Talwani gave federal officials until Friday to respond to the complaint, and Ozturk cannot be moved outside the state without at least 48 hours of advance notice to the court, according to Talwani's order. Her attorney Mahsa Khanbabai told The Independent on March 26 that she did not know where she was. By that night, despite a court order preventing her removal from the state, Ozturk was sent to a detention facility in Louisiana. The Independent has requested comment from ICE. Ozturk's arrest follows similar actions from federal authorities targeting student activists and students who have merely spoken in support of Palestine, none of whom have been accused of committing any crime. Donald Trump's administration has zeroed in on campus activism at prestigious universities, where Israel's war in Gaza has provoked a wave of demonstrations and protest encampments demanding an end to U.S. support for Israel's devastation. In an email to the Tufts community following her arrest, university president Sunil Kumar said the school was informed her visa had been revoked. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrew Joy Campbell called the footage of Ozturk's arrest 'disturbing.' 'Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views,' she said. 'This isn't public safety, it's intimidation that will, and should, be closely scrutinized in court.' The state's congressional delegation has also condemned the arrest and demanded Ozturk's release from detention. 'This arrest is the latest in an alarming pattern to stifle civil liberties,' Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement. 'The Trump administration is targeting students with legal status and ripping people out of their communities without due process. This is an attack on our Constitution and basic freedoms — and we will push back.' Senator Ed Markey said 'disappearances like these are part of Trump's all-out assault on our basic freedoms.' 'This is authoritarianism, and we will not let this stand,' he said. Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley, whose district includes Tufts campus, called Ozturk a 'peaceful protestor, grad student [and] my constituent who has a right to free speech [and] due process.' 'Now she's a political prisoner,' Pressley said. 'Free her now.' Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss said while he disagrees with Ozturk's op-ed, he has also been allowed to share his opposing view. 'That's how America works,' he wrote. 'Revoking her visa because of her political viewpoint is not how America works.' Press freedom groups have also sounded alarms over the administration's apparent collaboration with activist groups to target First Amendment-protected speech. 'Efforts to deport students based on their speech or protected activism undermine America's commitment to free expression,' Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told The Independent. 'If ICE detained Ozturk based on her op-ed or activism, it's a worrying escalation in an already fraught environment for college students here on student visas.' If Ozturk was arrested solely because of the op-ed, 'it is absolutely appalling,' said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.' 'No one would have ever believed, even during [Trump's] first term, that masked federal agents would abduct students from American universities for criticizing U.S. allies in student newspapers,' he said. 'Anyone with any regard whatsoever for the Constitution should recognize how fundamentally at odds this is with our values and should be deeply repulsed as an American, regardless of political leanings. Canary Mission is aptly named — it may serve as the canary in the coal mine for the First Amendment.' On March 25, university professors and academic organizations from across the country filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of violating the First Amendment through a 'climate of fear and repression' on college campuses. 'Out of fear that they might be arrested and deported for lawful expression and association, some noncitizen students and faculty have stopped attending public protests or resigned from campus groups that engage in political advocacy,' according to the lawsuit. That same day, a federal judge in Manhattan blocked the Trump administration from deporting Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student and lawful permanent resident who was the victim of the government's 'shocking overreach,' vilifying her political views and constitutionally protected right to protest, according to her attorneys. Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and prominent student activist accused by the Trump administration of organizing 'pro-Hamas' attacks on campus, is currently battling his removal from the United States after his shocking arrest in front of his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. He has also not been charged with any crime. He is currently detained in Louisiana as his case moves jurisdictions to a federal court in New Jersey.
The Independent
27-03-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
A Tufts student was on her way to dinner with friends. Then an ICE officer in disguise detained her
Rumeysa Ozturk was on her way to an Iftar dinner to break Ramadan fast with her friends when a man in a black hooded sweatshirt approached her and grabbed her wrists. She screamed. Another man in a ball cap and hooded sweatshirt then walked behind her, pulling out a badge from under his hoodie before grabbing Ozturk's phone from her hand. Other plain-clothes agents surrounded her with neck gaiters covering their faces, according to footage of her arrest near her apartment in Massachusetts. Of the six agents who surrounded her, all but one wore masks. 'Can I just call the cops?' she can be heard saying. 'We are the police,' one agent said before removing her backpack and placing her in handcuffs. Her arrest — captured in full view of a surveillance camera on March 25 — has sent chills among student activists and civil rights groups after a string of similar incidents targeting international students for their Palestinian advocacy. Who is Rumeysa Ozturk? Ozturk is a student at Tuft University's doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development. She graduated with a master's degree from the Teachers College at Columbia University, according to her LinkedIn. 'I am passionate about researching children's and adolescents' digital media and technologies for caring, kind, and compassionate media environments,' she writes. 'As an interdisciplinary media researcher and developmental scientist in training, I research children's and adolescents' positive development in a media-embedded, globalized, and connected world.' A profile from Columbia's Teachers College says her research interests include 'representation in children's television, media literacy, and prosocial development.' She also co-founded an independent children's media initiative in Istanbul and, in her free time, she enjoys 'reading picture books, hiking, baking (without recipes), and binge-watching cartoons and animations.' 'My graduate studies ... have been rewarding not only by providing a strong foundation in developmental science but also because it initiated the beginnings of friendships with a wonderful team of colloquies and international friends,' she said at the time. 'I will always remember the inspiration, innovation, and a shared passion for education and child development that surrounded me at Teachers College.' Last year, in response to Israel 's ongoing devastation of Gaza, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily newspaper calling on the university to divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel in an effort to hold Israel accountable 'for clear violations of international law.' 'Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide,' the op-ed says. The op-ed was written by four students and endorsed by 32 others. Ozturk is among dozens of students and professors identified by Canary Mission, a pro-Israel campaign that maintains a database intended to blacklist and intimidate activists the group accuses of promoting 'hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews.' The op-ed appears to be the group's only alleged evidence against her. Canary Mission appeared to take credit for her arrest on March 27, writing that 'sources point to her Canary Mission profile as the primary cause.' A statement from the Department of Homeland Security claimed Ozturk 'engaged in activities in support of Hamas ' — designated as a terrorist group behind the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked its retaliatory campaign in Gaza — but did not provide evidence of the allegations against her. 'Rumeysa has been my student, colleague, friend for over a decade,' Northeastern University psychologist Reyyan Bilge wrote. '[D]oes not carry a hateful bone in her body let alone being antisemitic. I wholeheartedly vouch for her and unless we speak up, these horrific events will continue to happen!' Ozturk's attorney filed a petition of habeas corpus challenging her arrest and detention. Massachusetts District Judge Indira Talwani gave federal officials until Friday to respond to the complaint, and Ozturk cannot be moved outside the state without at least 48 hours of advance notice to the court, according to Talwani's order. Her attorney Mahsa Khanbabai told The Independent on March 26 that she did not know where she was. By that night, despite a court order preventing her removal from the state, Ozturk was sent to a detention facility in Louisiana. The Independent has requested comment from ICE. Trump's 'disappearance' of international students Ozturk's arrest follows similar actions from federal authorities targeting student activists and students who have merely spoken in support of Palestine, none of whom have been accused of committing any crime. Donald Trump 's administration has zeroed in on campus activism at prestigious universities, where Israel's war in Gaza has provoked a wave of demonstrations and protest encampments demanding an end to U.S. support for Israel's devastation. In an email to the Tufts community following her arrest, university president Sunil Kumar said the school was informed her visa had been revoked. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrew Joy Campbell called the footage of Ozturk's arrest 'disturbing.' 'Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views,' she said. 'This isn't public safety, it's intimidation that will, and should, be closely scrutinized in court.' The state's congressional delegation has also condemned the arrest and demanded Ozturk's release from detention. 'This arrest is the latest in an alarming pattern to stifle civil liberties,' Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement. 'The Trump administration is targeting students with legal status and ripping people out of their communities without due process. This is an attack on our Constitution and basic freedoms — and we will push back.' Senator Ed Markey said 'disappearances like these are part of Trump's all-out assault on our basic freedoms.' 'This is authoritarianism, and we will not let this stand,' he said. Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley, whose district includes Tufts campus, called Ozturk a 'peaceful protestor, grad student [and] my constituent who has a right to free speech [and] due process.' 'Now she's a political prisoner,' Pressley said. 'Free her now.' Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss said while he disagrees with Ozturk's op-ed, he has also been allowed to share his opposing view. 'That's how America works,' he wrote. 'Revoking her visa because of her political viewpoint is not how America works.' Warnings of a 'climate of fear and repression' against free speech Press freedom groups have also sounded alarms over the administration's apparent collaboration with activist groups to target First Amendment -protected speech. 'Efforts to deport students based on their speech or protected activism undermine America's commitment to free expression,' Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told The Independent. 'If ICE detained Ozturk based on her op-ed or activism, it's a worrying escalation in an already fraught environment for college students here on student visas.' If Ozturk was arrested solely because of the op-ed, 'it is absolutely appalling,' said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.' 'No one would have ever believed, even during [Trump's] first term, that masked federal agents would abduct students from American universities for criticizing U.S. allies in student newspapers,' he said. 'Anyone with any regard whatsoever for the Constitution should recognize how fundamentally at odds this is with our values and should be deeply repulsed as an American, regardless of political leanings. Canary Mission is aptly named — it may serve as the canary in the coal mine for the First Amendment.' On March 25, university professors and academic organizations from across the country filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of violating the First Amendment through a 'climate of fear and repression' on college campuses. 'Out of fear that they might be arrested and deported for lawful expression and association, some noncitizen students and faculty have stopped attending public protests or resigned from campus groups that engage in political advocacy,' according to the lawsuit. That same day, a federal judge in Manhattan blocked the Trump administration from deporting Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student and lawful permanent resident who was the victim of the government's 'shocking overreach,' vilifying her political views and constitutionally protected right to protest, according to her attorneys. Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and prominent student activist accused by the Trump administration of organizing 'pro- Hamas ' attacks on campus, is currently battling his removal from the United States after his shocking arrest in front of his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. He has also not been charged with any crime. He is currently detained in Louisiana as his case moves jurisdictions to a federal court in New Jersey.
