Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, detained by plainclothes ICE agents in a chilling scene last month, has experienced multiple health emergencies and had her hijab removed by a staff member, she said in a Thursday court document.
In a six-page declaration filed by the ACLU and Öztürk's lawyers, the student said she has had four separate asthma attacks in federal custody which were largely ignored, with one nurse telling Öztürk that her asthma was “all in my mind.”
“I fear that my asthma is not being adequately treated and it will not be adequately treated while I remain in ICE custody,” Öztürk said. “The air is full of fumes from cleaning supplies and is damp which triggers my asthma. We don’t get much fresh air which also impacts my ability to breathe well. The conditions in the facility are very unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane. There is a mouse in our cell. The boxes they provide for our clothing are very dirty and they don’t give us adequate hygiene supplies.”
Öztürk, slated for deportation for authoring a pro-Palestinian op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper, said she’s experienced a lack of respect for her faith, too. She alleges ICE has refused her pleas for prayer materials, denied her a meeting with a Muslim chaplain and even attempted to take her hijab.
“Once they finally took me to the medical center, the nurse took my temperature. She said ‘you need to take that thing off your head’ and took off my hejab without asking my permission. I told her you can’t take off my hejab and she said this is for your health,” the doctoral student explained. “I don’t feel safe at the medical center because of my prior experiences there. They complain when I go there… They also write information in my medical records that is not accurate.”
The Tufts student also spoke out about the day of her arrest in the declaration, explaining she initially worried the ICE agents were private citizens with violent intentions.
“Since appearing on the Canary Mission website in February, I had begun to be afraid that I could be targeted for violence,” Öztürk said, referring to an organization tracking pro-Palestinian student ideology. “When the men approached me, my first thought was that they were not government officials but private individuals who wanted to harm me.”
The 30-year-old Turkish native said she was taken from Massachusetts to New Hampshire, to Vermont, and eventually to Louisiana by officers who gave her few answers and kept her from a lawyer for days.
Öztürk, who has lived in the U.S. since 2018, is one of more than 600 students to have their visas revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who argued in a memo made public this week that he has the authority to deport individuals for their “beliefs.”
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