Shafaqna English- A federal judge on Monday ordered the lifting of Trump-backed limits on a Tufts University PhD student to work on campus.
Chief US District Judge Denise Casper in Boston issued an injunction after concluding Ozturk was likely to succeed in proving US Immigration and Customs Enforcement unlawfully terminated her record in the database the same day that masked, plainclothes agents took her into custody in March.
That ICE-maintained database is called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System and is used to track foreign students who enter on visas. The termination of a student’s record from that database prevents that person from being employed.
She was detained after the US Department of State revoked her student visa as the Trump administration moved to crack down on non-citizens who engaged in pro-Palestinian activism on campuses.
The sole basis authorities provided for revoking her visa was an editorial she co-authored in Tufts’ student newspaper a year earlier criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. Following her release, Ozturk, a child development researcher, resumed her studies at Massachusetts-based Tufts.
But the administration’s refusal to restore her SEVIS record has prevented her from teaching or working as a research assistant.
Sources: Arab News