Dear readers,
It has been one year since Dr. Rümeysa Öztürk’s arrest by masked agents from the Department of Homeland Security near her home in Somerville. We are publishing a “special coverage” page to mark this date.
This special page lists all our news articles related to Öztürk’s legal cases, in addition to responses from Tufts affiliates and local officials. At the bottom of the page, we have listed all the op-eds submitted to the Daily by local residents, Tufts affiliates and Öztürk herself.
One of the newest articles is an analysis of evidence that was unsealed in January 2025 surrounding the State Department’s revocation of her visa and the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to detain her. Executive news editor Julian Glickman has written an article summarizing the past year of Öztürk’s legal proceedings.
I want to take this opportunity to address the timing of this page’s release and its title.
The Daily published an op-ed that she co-authored on March 26, 2024. DHS detained Öztürk on March 25, 2025. The op-ed was one day away from turning one year old when she was detained. Much of what Öztürk and her coauthors argued for in the piece has gone unheeded by the Tufts administration in the two years since the Tufts Community Union Senate’s resolutions.
The unsealed evidence shows that the government used the 2024 op-ed and a series of loose associations to justify her detainment, informed by her profile on the Canary Mission website. By their own admission, the government — specifically Homeland Security Investigations — did not find further evidence to revoke her visa on national security concerns or antisemitism. This lack of hard, substantive evidence is ultimately why the Boston immigration judge terminated her removal proceedings.
Nevertheless, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s State Department signed off on the silent revocation of her visa on the same day an action memo was delivered to a Senior Bureau Official.
Any discussion or reflection about Öztürk’s case is inextricably linked to the 2024 op-ed. Today marks two years since the op-ed was published. That is why the page is titled “Two Years Later.”
The March 2024 op-ed was an exercise of free speech, which the First Amendment protects. Infringing on that basic right has led to several lawsuits; the Daily has worked to uphold and practice that basic right for 46 years. We will not stop doing so.
The Daily remains committed to protecting the voices of community members and Tufts affiliates in our reporting and in the submission of op-eds. I highly encourage you to email our Opinion section at opinion@tuftsdaily.com to contribute to a culture of constructive debate and reflection about any topics that you feel the community should be informed about.
The following writers were instrumental in covering Öztürk’s proceedings, and I am deeply appreciative of their work and efforts:
Samantha Eng, executive news editor, spring 2025
Julian Glickman, executive news editor, spring 2026
Matthew Sage, executive news editor, spring 2024
Anika Parr, deputy news editor
Shayna Levy, news editor
Michael Onysko, former deputy news editor
I want to especially thank Mike Joseph and the SNWorks team for helping us create the special page.
Pax et Lux,
Josué Pérez
Editor in Chief
