Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted by federal agents on Tuesday and has reportedly had her visa revoked, the university says, in what seems to be the latest instance of the Trump administration targeting and detaining an immigrant for their pro-Palestine advocacy.

Ozturk, who hails from Turkey, is in the U.S. on a valid F-1 student visa, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai. She is a doctoral candidate in the university’s Child Study and Human Development department and formerly attended Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar, according to The Tufts Daily.

Video of Ozturk’s arrest captured by a home security camera shows the student being apprehended by a group of six people in plain clothes whose faces are covered by masks and hats. A man first approaches and apprehends her, then grabs her wrists as the others convene from different directions. She asks if she can call the police for help, and they tell her, “we are the police.”

The group takes her backpack and handcuffs her before escorting her to an unmarked car parked nearby. The arrest and abduction take place in the course of less than two minutes.

Khanbabai says that the PhD candidate was on her way to meet friends for iftar, when those observing Ramadan break their fast, when she was apprehended by and detained by Department of Homeland Security agents.

Officials initially did not specify where Ozturk had been taken, and Khanbabai was unable to reach her. Later on Wednesday, Khanbabai said in a motion that she was informed by a senator’s office that the student was transferred to Louisiana. DHS agents also sent Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil to Louisiana, where he is being held in an immigration jail notorious for its abuses.

The transfer is despite the fact that a judge approved a petition barring Ozturk from being removed from Massachusetts without advance notice filed by Khanbabai on Tuesday. The Trump administration has been openly flouting court orders when it comes to its anti-immigrant onslaught; earlier this month, for instance, immigration officials deported Brown University assistant professor and doctor Rasha Alawieh to Lebanon, despite a judge having ordered the visa holder not to be removed.

Ozturk’s abduction comes just days after she was doxxed by Zionist vigilante group Canary Mission, advocates for Palestinian rights said. The group cited her activism against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including an op-ed published in Tufts Daily last year demanding that university leadership divest from Israel and condemn its slaughter of Palestinians.

Pro-Palestine activist groups have organized a rally in solidarity with Ozturk on Wednesday to demand her release. This is the first known instance of a student being targeted by immigration officials for their pro-Palestine activism in Boston.

Ozturk is the latest campus activist involved in the student movement against Israel’s genocide to be targeted by ICE in recent weeks. Recent Columbia University graduate and leader of student protests Khalil was abducted by ICE earlier this month and had his green card revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump officials openly admitted that Khalil was targeted for his activism, in what legal experts say is a clear violation of free speech rights.

Columbia student Yunseo Chung has also been targeted by the Trump administration for her participation in student protests. Immigration officials are seeking to deport Chung, a legal permanent resident who moved to the U.S. when she was 7 years old, according to a lawsuit filed by Chung against the administration this week.

Note: This story has been updated to reflect new information about Ozturk’s location.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

Israeli forces killed two Palestinian journalists in Gaza on Monday in separate strikes, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists killed to at least 208 since October 7, 2023, according to a count by Gaza officials.

Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, was killed along with his wife and child when Israel struck his home in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Al Jazeera reported that Israel deliberately targeted Mansour in the attack.

Shortly after, Israeli forces killed Hossam Shabat with a targeted airstrike while he was driving his car in Beit Lahiya, local sources reported. Shabat, who was 23 years old, had become well-known for his reports from northern Gaza amid Israel’s total siege on the region. He was a contributor to U.S. outlet Drop Site News and a reporter for Al Jazeera Mubasher.

Shabat’s friends posted a message written by the young journalist that he requested to be published on social media in the event of his death.

“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces,” he said. “When this all began, I was only 21 years old — a college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury.”

“By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest — something I haven’t known in the past 18 months,” he wrote. “I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.”

Drop Site condemned the attack in a statement. “Drop Site News holds Israel and the U.S. responsible for killing Hossam,” the outlet said. “More than 200 of our Palestinian media colleagues have been killed by Israel — supplied with weapons and given blanket impunity by most Western governments — over the past seventeen months.”

Fellow journalists in Gaza mourned Shabat’s death. “I no longer have words,” said Gaza journalist Abubaker Abed, who was a colleague of Shabat at Drop Site. “This is just an incalculable loss. This is unbearable.”

Shabat, like Abed and many other young people in Gaza, became a war journalist when the genocide began despite having other aspirations. Last year, he thanked university students across the world for protesting for Gaza, noting that he was in his third year in college when the genocide began on October 7, 2023.

“I’ll never be able to finish my studies because Israeli occupation forces bombed my university and every other university in Gaza,” he wrote.

His life was upended as he went out to report on Israel’s genocide, separating from his family in order to show the world the barbarity of the killings.

In October 2024, Israeli authorities issued a list of journalists it was seemingly targeting for assassination, accusing them, without evidence, as being affiliated with “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist” groups. Shabat, who was one of the only journalists left in north Gaza at the time, was on that list. He had already survived another targeted attack in November, when Israeli forces injured him in an apparent “double tap” strike on a house in northern Gaza.

Despite the November attack and concerns he was being hunted by Israeli forces for his work, Shabat pledged to continue reporting.

Just a month ago, amid the ceasefire, Shabat posted a video of him and his mother being reunited after 492 days, having been separated due to Israel’s evacuation orders.

"Time now is measured not in minutes, but in lifetimes of pain and tears. With every passing moment the anxiety and tension of the people here grows, as they wonder whether they will stay alive long enough for the fire to cease," wrote Hossam Shabat in one of his stories for us.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) March 24, 2025

Last week, shortly after Israeli authorities resumed their heavy bombing of Gaza despite the ceasefire agreement, Shabat posted a video of him once again putting on his flak jacket and helmet marked “press.”

“I thought it was over and I’d finally get some rest, but the genocide is back in full force, and I’m back on the front lines,” he said.

Shabat had continually pleaded for the world to intervene and end the genocide.

“On October 17th, 2023, Israel bombed Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza,” Shabat wrote in his final Instagram reel. “Israel denied it. Western media believed it. And the bombing continued as ‘Israel investigated itself.’ UN and NGO investigations proved that Israel indeed did it. No government acted. No condemnations.”

“So Israel continued bombing, besieging and targeting EVERY SINGLE HOSPITAL in Gaza,” he continued. “Eighteen months of genocide and impunity meant that they didn’t have to deny bombing hospitals anymore. No one cares… They say the magic H word and war crimes are justified.”

Even posthumously, Shabat pled for Palestinian rights.

“I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza,” the journalist wrote in his final message. “Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.