Tuesday 10/February/2026 – 02:26 AM
A US immigration judge has rejected President Donald Trump’s administration’s attempt to deport a Tufts University student who was arrested as part of the targeting of pro-Palestinian activists on campus, her lawyers said.
Deportation of a female university student from Tufts University
Lawyers for the student, Romesa Ozturk, who holds a doctorate from Tufts University and is of Turkish origin, said that the immigration judge concluded that the US Department of Homeland Security had not met its burden of proving her deportability, and ended the procedures against her in a decision issued on January 29, according to what was reported by Reuters.
Her immigration lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, explained that the decision was issued by immigration judge Rupal Patel in Boston, which temporarily puts an end to the procedures that began with Ozturk’s arrest last March, after the US State Department canceled her student visa.
She added that the American authorities based their visa cancellation on an editorial that Ozturk co-wrote in the Tufts University student newspaper a year ago, in which she criticized the university’s handling of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
In a statement, Ozturk expressed her satisfaction with the decision, considering that it might give hope to others who were subjected to what she described as injustice by the American government, while the administration still has the right to appeal the ruling before the Immigration Appeals Board of the Ministry of Justice.
