On March 25, 2025, plainclothes ICE agents illegally abducted Rümeysa Öztürk, a PhD student and Fulbright scholar studying at Tufts University on a valid student visa. The undisputed facts provide a basis for undertaking a criminal investigation into whether President Donald Trump, senior Trump officials – including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem – and ICE agents conspired to kidnap Rümeysa Öztürk. They unlawfully stripped her of her visa, forcibly restrained and arrested her, and secretly smuggled her out of Massachusetts, purposefully and in defiance of a court order, to a detention facility in Louisiana where she was denied access to her attorneys and where her attorneys could not verify the conditions of her confinement or whether she was receiving adequate medical care. Her only “offense” was that she exercised her constitutional right to free speech in an op-ed in the Tufts school newspaper that called upon the university to abide by undergraduate student Senate resolutions that sought to hold Israel accountable for international law violations against the Palestinian people by divesting from Israeli companies.

Ms. Öztürk's arrest represents a dangerous and illegal assault on our Constitution. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan must launch an immediate and thorough criminal investigation to determine whether charges should be brought against those responsible for Ms. Öztürk's kidnapping.

While Ms. Öztürk was released from immigration detention on May 9, 2025, following a federal court order, the Massachusetts Attorney General and the Middlesex District Attorney retain the duty to investigate this matter and to ensure that anyone in violation of state criminal laws in Massachusetts prohibiting kidnapping is held accountable.