DHS Found No Evidence Detained Tufts Student Engaged in Antisemitic Activity, Supported Terror, Internal Docs Show

Government investigators found no evidence that Rumeysa Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, had “engaged in antisemitic activity” or made “any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or antisemitism generally,” before the Trump administration tried to deport her, according to newly unsealed court documents.

Öztürk was detained by plainclothes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on the streets of Boston last March as the administration moved to deport several pro-Palestinian, non-citizen student protesters based on a finding by the secretary of state, under Section 1227 of federal immigration law, that their continued presence in the United States “would have potentially serious foreign policy consequences.”

At the time of her detention, the administration pointed to an opinion piece she had written in the student newspaper calling for the university’s divestment from Israel. Facing backlash over the detention, officials said more information on her ties to terrorism was coming. A DHS spokesperson said at the time that Öztürk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.”

However, the newly unsealed documents reveal the dossier investigators compiled on Öztürk centered entirely on the op-ed. Despite there being no evidence that she engaged in any antisemitic activity or made any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or antisemitism generally, administration officials recommended that her visa be revoked based on the “totality of the circumstances presented.”

The new information raises questions about Trump officials’ public justification for attempting to deport Öztürk and the other students — though, legally, the secretary of state is granted statutorily broad discretion to remove noncitizens from the country. 

“The Trump Administration is using every tool available to get terrorist-supporting aliens out of our country,” a State Department spokesperson told National Review in response to the newly-released court records. “A visa is a privilege, not a right. We abide by all applicable laws to ensure the United States does not harbor aliens who pose a threat to our national security.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NR.

In the case of the other students whom the administration attempted to deport — Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri, and Yunseo Chung — dossiers were built with open-source research that largely centered on news clips about their involvement in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel campus protests.

Dossiers on Columbia University students Khalil and Chung included information about their respective attendance at protests where fliers containing language from Hamas were distributed. However, the investigators did not appear to find any evidence that either student had been involved in producing or distributing the fliers.

In the case of Suri, a Georgetown University graduate student, investigators did in fact believe he had ties to Hamas or was acting on the group’s behalf, as he is married to the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, a former adviser to the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Still, the dossier did not include any evidence that Suri or his wife, who is an American citizen, had been in touch with Hamas leaders. Suri’s file instead pointed to his online presence in which he “appears to post pro-Palestinian content” on Instagram and had apparently posted on Facebook expressing support for Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin. 

The newly-released files were part of several hundred pages of documents that the administration submitted as evidence in a trial held in Massachusetts last year over noncitizen students’ freedom of expression. The documents were unsealed by a federal judge on Thursday at the request of several media outlets, including the New York Times.

Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, ruled last year that the administration had illegally targeted the students for deportation based on their speech about the Israel-Hamas conflict in a case brought by two national academic organizations that argued the arrests had chilled academic speech on college campuses.

Young ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had participated in an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to “pick off” a few students in an effort to violate the free speech rights of noncitizen scholars more broadly.

“These cabinet secretaries have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution,” Young said last week.

The documents submitted by the administration showed officials worried that the deportations might not hold up in court because the offenses compiled in the students’ dossiers could be seen as protected speech.

“Given the potential that a court may consider his actions inextricably tied to speech protected under the First Amendment, it is likely that courts will scrutinize the basis for this determination,” officials wrote in a memo about efforts to deport Madhawi, a green card holder and Columbia undergraduate student.

Öztürk was released on bail in May after a federal judge ruled that the administration did not have sufficient evidence to support her detention. She has been permitted to return to her studies at Tufts but remains involved in two ongoing legal cases: Her illegal detention claim is being litigated in Vermont and she is the subject of immigration proceedings in Louisiana.