Rumeysa Ozturk is a 30-year-old graduate student at Tufts University and a native of Turkey who wears a traditional Muslim headscarf. Six weeks ago, she was arrested by masked federal agents on a street corner near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, and sent to a detention camp in Louisiana.
Her only crime was that she dared to write an opinion piece for the student paper at Tufts, “criticizing the university’s response to pro-Palestinian demands,” reports The New York Times.
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