ICE Jailed a Student for an Op-Ed, Now She’s Left America

In recent days, we learned that Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University grad student who was snatched off the street by masked ICE agents last year and locked up for more than a month, has had enough of America, and moved home to Turkey. The U.S. government had continued to threaten her with legal proceedings and deportation, even after releasing her from detention. 

Dr. Öztürk’s “crime?” Co-authoring an op-ed in the student newspaper advocating for Palestinian rights. 

A year ago this week, while Rümeysa Öztürk was being held without charge in a Louisiana ICE facility and her case was drawing national condemnation, Question Everything co-hosted an urgent live event at Tufts with The Tufts Daily, which had published Dr. Öztürk’s op-ed. That episode has just received a Webby Award for Best News & Politics podcast episode.

Student journalists Arghya Thallapragada and Ellora Onion-De and Question Everything host Brian Reed were joined by former editor-in-chief of the Washington Post and Boston Globe Marty Baron, First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche, one of Dr. Öztürk’s ACLU attorneys Carol Rose, and senior politics reporter at The Intercept, Akela Lacey, to wrestle in real time with the gravity of what it meant for the U.S. government to jail a student for writing a political opinion in the student newspaper. In the wake of ICE surges in American cities and more retaliation against journalists by the administration, the conversation takes on new, perhaps even more disturbing meaning, a year later. 

This episode originally ran on May 1st, 2025.

Read the Op-ed Dr. Öztürk and others wrote that ran in The Tufts Daily a year ago in March, and see the Tufts Daily’s recent retrospective of their coverage of Dr. Öztürk’s case.

Watch the video of federal agents in plainclothes, forcing Rümeysa Öztürk into an SUV on March 25, 2025.

Quick thing: In our discussion Carol Rose says the ACLU has filed 100 legal actions in President Trump’s first 100 days. The specific count on those was actually higher: the ACLU filed 110 legal actions in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.

“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter.

Guests:

• Naz Ahmed, Director of the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project
• Arghya Thallapragada, former editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily
• Ellora Onion-De, associate editor of The Tufts Daily
• Marty Baron, former editor-in-chief of the Washington Post and Boston Globe
• Robert Bertsche, KLARIS Law
• Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts
• Akela Lacey, Senior Politics Reporter at The Intercept

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