If genocide did not disturb their peace, why should deportations?

On the disappearance of Tufts University student Rümeysa Özturk

It began with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil on 8 March 2025. Within days, several other students and scholars were picked up by masked agents belonging to Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The students’ crime? Showing solidarity with Palestine. Whereas each case has shown itself to be as absurd as the next, the arrest of Tufts University PhD student Rümeysa Özturk on a street in Boston - captured by CCTV as well as from passerby footage - sent shivers around the country. If anything, it showed that Gestapo tactics in the US were alive and thriving. Days later, it emerged that Rümeysa Özturk had been arrested for an op-ed she wrote in the student newspaper. How has her arrest impacted the student community? What has it meant for organising on the campus? But as B.C., a student from Tufts, writes: if the genocide itself wasn’t enough to change people's stance on Palestine, it’s unlikely the arrest and threatened deportation of student protesters would.

I woke up at 2 AM in the early morning on Wednesday, March 26th.

Unable to go back to sleep, I turned to my phone.

I immediately saw half a dozen missed calls and hundreds of signal messages all about one thing- that Tufts PHD student Rümeysa Özturk had been abducted by ICE agents the previous afternoon.

In the surveillance video recorded by a neighbor, masked agents are seen confronting Rümeysa on a sidewalk, as she was walking to break her fast for Ramadan.

The agents handcuffed Rümeysa, confiscated her backpack, and put her in an unmarked van and sped off.

The abduction occurred 300 feet outside my bedroom window.

By Wednesday evening, the video of Rümeysa’s kidnapping had gone viral.

I can only imagine the pain of her mother, who was on a call with Rümeysa at the time.

Rümeysa was taken by the state because of an article she wrote in the Tufts Daily in March of 2024.

Here is what happened.

In March 2024, the student senate voted in a resolution calling for Tufts to divest from Israel as well as acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.

Ten hours after the vote passed, university president Sunil Kumar condemned the vote, writing "we reject the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement” and the student vote “force[d] our community into opposing groups rather than uniting us to build from areas of agreement.”

Rümeysa penned an op-ed in which she critiqued Kumar’s response.

Now, a year later, Rümeysa is being held by the U.S. government for that op-ed.

On April 2nd, eight days after her abduction, Kumar released a statement supporting Rümeysa.

It is notable that it took the university over a week to respond to the kidnapping of a student, whereas it only took just 10 hours to respond to the student vote for divestment.

That said, the university’s statement on Rümeysa’s abduction, while milquetoast, was appreciated, and certainly a lot better than those of other universities like Columbia, who have seemingly opened their doors to agents on campus.

However, universities like Tufts cannot only support human rights when it is convenient.

First, it is matter of principle.

After all, when I applied to Tufts, I had to answer this question: “Where are you on your journey of engaging with or fighting for social justice?”

Secondly, and more importantly, the abduction of Rümeysa is intimately linked to systemic violence against Palestinians, violence that Tufts is complicit in.

We cannot talk about any of this violence without noting that US and Israeli police learn tactics of repression from each other through what Jewish anti-Zionist activists have called the ‘Deadly Exchange program’, which Tufts police participated in as recently as 2017.

Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which kidnapped Rümeysa as well as other students and scholars around the country, was founded as part of the so-called US-led War on Terror in the 2000’s.

This was a racist project that looked to internationally criminalize the Muslim body.

More broadly, the kidnapping of Rümeysa resembles the “Administrative Detention” program which allows Israel to imprison thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children without trial.

As the number of people abducted by ICE across the country grows, and Israel continues its genocide in Palestine, students are continuing to fight for divestment at Tufts.

Granted, it is harder to organize for divestment at Tufts University, but the struggle still lives on.

The brightly colored tents and banners that littered the Academic Quad a year ago have been taken down.

Instead, students have targeted a lab at Tufts run by the US Army Development Command (DEVCOM) which conducts research to “optimize the lethality” of soldiers in urban combat.

Tufts has responded to protests against the lab by turning the building hosting the lab into a veritable fortress, moving classes and study areas while stationing guards.

Tufts has also sent over 70 disciplinary letters to student organizers since the beginning of the campaign, and several are now facing suspension or expulsion.

Some people at Tufts are privileged enough to enjoy business as usual.

There are parties and midterms and professors who do not mention world events in class.

This normalcy should not be surprising- if genocide would not disturb their peace, why should deportations?

Nowadays, I find myself acutely aware of both the stupidity and unique danger of the present moment. Stupidity, because universities are instituting mask bans while masked federal agents kidnap students to send them to concentration camps.

And danger, not just because of the aforementioned violence but because this violence seemed unthinkable a year ago.

What that is now unthinkable will become a reality a year from now?