US court orders Trump admin to restore Rumeysa Ozturk’s student status

The ruling comes months after the Tufts doctoral student was freed from ICE detention where she was held for opposing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.Published On 9 Dec 2025The United States government must restore Rumeysa Ozturk’s student visa record, a federal court has ruled, months after the Tufts student was released from immigration detention where she was being held for speaking out against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.United States District Judge Denise Casper delivered an interim ruling on Monday that US President Donald Trump’s administration must restore Ozturk’s name to a database of foreign students administered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), known as SEVIS.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4‘My duty’: Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil meets lawmakers at US Capitollist 2 of 4United States moves to restrict visa length for foreign students, reporterslist 3 of 4US deportation drive against pro-Palestine students is illegal, judge ruleslist 4 of 4‘Bring him home’: Sami Hamdi’s wife urges US to release UK journalistend of listThe return of her SEVIS record would allow Ozturk, who is a doctoral student in childhood development and the media at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, to work and participate in research related to her studies, her lawyers said.In a statement responding to the ruling, Ozturk said her student record was “unlawfully cancelled” because she co-wrote an op-ed advocating “for equal dignity and humanity for all”.“After eight long months, that record will now finally be restored,” she said.“Going through this brutality, which began with my unlawful arrest and 45 days of detention at a shameful for-profit ICE prison in Louisiana, I feel more connected to everyone whose educational rights are being denied – especially in Gaza,” Ozturk added, noting that “countless scholars have been murdered and every university has been intentionally destroyed,” in the Palestinian enclave.Ozturk, who came to the US from Turkiye to study as a Fullbright scholar, was taken into immigration detention on March 25 after her student visa was revoked as part of a wider Trump administration’s crackdown on students who spoke out against Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.