Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk says she's back in Turkey "on my own timeline," 1 year after ICE detention

Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University graduate student who was taken into custody by federal agents on a Somerville, Massachusetts street last year and detained for weeks, is now back home in Turkey.

"After 13 years of dedicated study, I am very proud to have completed my Ph.D. and to return home on my own timeline," Ozturk said in a statement shared by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Surveillance video showed Ozturk's detention by plain-clothed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside her off-campus apartment last spring. She spent six weeks at a Louisiana detention center before a judge ordered her release on bail.

The Trump administration had revoked Ozturk's student visa after she co-authored an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper that was critical of Israel. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last year that hundreds of international students have had their visas revoked for participating in campus protests. 

"The time stolen from me by the U.S. government belongs not just to me, but to the children and youth I have dedicated my life to advocating for," said Ozturk, who earned a degree in child study and human development. "With them in mind, I am choosing to return home as planned to continue my career as a woman scholar without losing more time to the state-imposed violence and hostility I have experienced in the United States – all for nothing more than co-signing an op-ed advocating for Palestinian rights."

The ACLU said the government had appealed an immigration judge's decision earlier this year to end proceedings against Ozturk, but since then both parties "reached a settlement to resolve outstanding legal issues in federal court and to jointly move to dismiss her immigration proceedings." 

WBZ-TV has reached out to ICE for comment.