Judge Orders Reinstatement Of SEVIS Record, Clearing Tufts PhD Student To Work On Campus

A federal judge in Boston has ordered the federal government to reinstate a Tufts University PhD student's record in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), clearing the way for her to resume paid campus work.

Chief U.S. District Judge Denise Casper issued an injunction after finding that Rumeysa Ozturk is likely to succeed in showing that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unlawfully terminated her SEVIS entry on the same day masked, plainclothes agents detained her in March. SEVIS is the ICE‑maintained database used to track foreign students who enter the United States on visas; removal from the system prevents a student from being employed while enrolled.

Ozturk, a Tufts PhD student, child‑development researcher and former Fulbright scholar who has been active in pro‑Palestinian campus advocacy, said she was grateful for the ruling and hopes "that no one else experiences the injustices I have suffered." The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The video of Ozturk’s March arrest on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, went viral and drew criticism from civil‑rights groups. Authorities detained her after the State Department revoked her student visa amid a broader effort to scrutinize non‑citizens involved in pro‑Palestinian campus activism. Officials said the only basis given for the visa revocation was an editorial she co‑authored in Tufts’ student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to the war in Gaza.

A former Fulbright scholar, Ozturk was held for 45 days in a detention facility in Louisiana before a federal judge in Vermont—where she had been briefly detained—ordered her immediate release after finding she raised a substantial claim that her detention constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of her First Amendment free‑speech rights.

After her release, Ozturk returned to her studies at Tufts, but the government's refusal to restore her SEVIS record continued to bar her from teaching and working as a research assistant. Her lawyers asked Judge Casper to require reinstatement to prevent further harm to her academic progress and career prospects in the months before graduation.

Judge Casper wrote that the government offered "shifting justifications" for terminating Ozturk's SEVIS entry and at times wrongly asserted she had failed to maintain lawful student status. To the extent the government now acknowledges she complied with visa rules, the judge added, it is "all the more irrational" for the government to impose penalties inconsistent with that status.

The ruling requires the government to restore Ozturk's SEVIS record, allowing her to take on campus employment she was previously barred from doing. The case highlights tensions between enforcement actions on visa status and constitutional free‑speech protections for non‑citizen students on college campuses.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Aurora Ellis.)