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By Henry De Groot, Travis Wayne, Reid Jackson, Aaron Hall
Tuesday, March 25: Tufts Union Worker Detained By ICE In Somerville
By Henry De Groot
SOMERVILLE, MA – Tufts University PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the evening of March 25, 2025. According to Öztürk’s attorney, sources report, Öztürk has a valid F-1 visa and was returning home to meet with friends and break her Ramadan fast when she was detained by federal agents, near Electric Avenue and Mason Street in Somerville, just a block away from Tufts’ campus in Medford. Some reports indicate that agents had been circling her neighborhood in unmarked vehicles for several days.
The university administration reports they were told that Ozturk’s visa has been terminated. They shared the following statement:
In March 2024, Öztürk was one of four authors of an Op-Ed in the The Tufts Daily, the school’s student newspaper, titled “Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions.” The article called on the universities’ administration to implement the anti-genocide resolutions adopted by the Tufts Community Union Senate.
Öztürk is a member of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 509. Her attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, filed a petition of habeas corpus in Massachusetts federal court for her to be released. US District Court Judge Indira Talwani issued a 3-page ruling that Öztürk was not to be moved out of the state without prior notice, but the Trump Administration ignored the judicial order and moved her to Louisiana — where the Trump Administration has detained several targeted immigrant workers targeted as part of the Palestine movement.
The action comes as ICE reports that it arrested 370 migrants across Massachusetts after a multi-day raid targeting over 350 immigrant workers.
Öztürk’s detention is just the latest in a series of actions targeting university students, workers, and faculty as Trump carries out his election promise to deport foreign students who participated in pro-Palestinian and anti-war efforts. Öztürk was listed by the right-wing doxing website Canary Mission back in February 2025.
Our coverage at Working Mass of Rümeysa Öztürk’s abduction played a role in national attention: within a few days, over 1 million viewers had seen the footage with tens of thousands of interactions. As of this writing, 8 million viewers have seen Working Mass’s thread.
Wednesday, March 26: Somerville Stops Short of Escalation in Powder House Square
By Travis Wayne
Somerville, MA – On March 26, the Coalition for Palestinian Liberation at Tufts and the Palestine Youth Movement organized an emergency protest against ICE with dozens of other groups – notably unions, like Rümeysa Öztürk’s own Local 509, within six hours the day following the abduction of Tufts grad worker Rümeysa Öztürk. Union members reported to Working Mass that the local’s members embedded in the same higher education sectors of the union as Rümeysa organized heavy turnout. Foot traffic converged across the city as thousands descended upon one site: Powder House Park, the same hill where crowds decided to organize the Minutemen information network that sustained the American Revolution to throw off British rule. Rally organizers were aware of the symbolism. Powder House Square was where one tyrant’s end began; “We are about to do it again,” tour docent Mary Mangan shouted. Boston DSA released a rapid-fire email before 9 AM calling for mobilization to Powder House. The Somerville branch of the mass organization conducted direct outreach to hundreds of active members and supporters to mobilize their relative networks to the square.
After two hours of speeches, including rights training and mass education on the LUCE hotline for reporting ICE, the rally dispersed. Organizations returned to their networks to discuss how to translate LUCE hotline information into other languages and how to host similar rainings to raise community defense in their own constituencies. Willie Burnley Jr, DSA elected and Somerville City Councillor, sent out the LUCE flyer to his mass base. Somerville DSA members targeted pedestrian hot spots with hundreds of such flyers alongside organization meeting information on the hotline for reporting ICE and scheduled a Somerville ICE Watch guest speaker to conduct training for their next meeting.
Thursday, March 27: Cops Fight Off Hundreds from Entering Somerville City Hall in Support of Palestine
By Travis Wayne
Somerville, MA – On March 27, the day after thousands swarmed Powder House Square, masses of people surged at the guards of Somerville City Hall. Hundreds more than anticipated showed up at Somerville City Council’s meeting, thundering slogans.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHuKd3nM-26/?igsh=MWFmeXM5b2o2d2Y0ZA==
People were responding to an action call from Palestine organizers uniting to free Rümeysa Öztürk at Powder House Square the day before: support Somerville for Palestine‘s measure to end Somerville investment in Israeli apartheid by vote.
Despite hundreds shouting slogans outside, Somerville City Council chose to require Somerville for Palestine to organize to place the BDS municipal resolution on the November ballot instead of make a clear vote. “To get this question officially on the ballot, we need to collect signatures from at least 10% of Somerville’s registered voters,” organizers reported. Only two city councilors voted with Somerville for Palestine: DSA elected officials JT Scott and Willie Burnley Jr., endorsed a week later on April 6 by Boston DSA in his campaign for the highest political office in the local area: Mayor of Somerville. Burnley expressed his frustration with fellow councilors to Working Mass:
I am deeply disappointed that my colleagues refused to honor the efforts of Rümeysa Öztürk and the advocates in our community that have called for divestment from companies complicit with Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide by refusing to take this vote. As always, my faith remains in the people to struggle for liberation and dignity of us all.
The same day, ICE abducted Lewelyn Dixon – a lab technician and member of Local 925 of SEIU.
Dixon was the second SEIU member kidnapped by ICE.
Wednesday, April 2: Labor and Mass Organizations Unite Against ICE Abductions
By Reid Jackson
BOSTON, MA – After thousands flooded Somerville’s Powder House Square to protest the abduction of Rümeysa Öztürk before nearly overwhelming guards at Somerville City Hall for Palestine the next day, labor and local mass organizations united in Boston City Hall Plaza across the Charles River on April 2. Öztürk’s own Local 509 was joined by its Service Employees International Union raging against the abduction of two of its members, United Auto Workers, Boston Teachers Union, and the MIT Graduate Student Union, along with Boston DSA and other labor-oriented mass organizations, all came together with a message: demand for the immediate release of union siblings Rümeysa Öztürk and Lewelyn Dixon from ICE custody. The rally was attended by hundreds of union members and unorganized workers supporting labor that filled the crowd in front of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building.
Protesters came with signs, homemade and provided by the unions, each with their own message urging for the release of Rümeysa. A twenty footlong custom banner with Rümeysa’s likeness drawn read: “writing an op-ed is not a crime!” referencing the alleged reason for her abduction. Working families brought their kids in strollers and bundled them up for the brisk April weather. No chant went unanswered as the crowd rumbled through building canyons around.
Come for one, face us all! Free Rümeysa, free us all!
These chants were led by speakers who spoke on a platform and podium brought by labor to the face of the imposing JFK Federal Building. Among the speakers were April Verett, President of the SEIU, Patricia Jehlen, State Senator for the district Rümeysa lived in, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on the need for the city of Boston and the Commonwealth itself to unite to protect our neighbors who could be the next targets of the Trump Administration. Verrett from the SEIU stood defiant:
We dealt with the dreams deferred too long. We’ve got to seize this moment and make it ours. We’re right here. We’re not backing down. We want Rümeysa back. We want Lewelyn Dixon back. We want every single person who has been detained. We want them back.
Two nights later, SEIU projected two messages over the Boston Common: “No Scabs, No Fascists.” Another showed Rümeysa’s face with the message “Free Rümeysa Now!”
Image of projections from Boston Common by SEIU. Photo by SEIU Local 509.
Saturday, April 5: “Hands Off Boston” Rallies Over 20,000 to Boston Common
By Aaron Hall and Travis Wayne
BOSTON, MA —- In the late morning of April 5, 2025, over 20,000 protestors gathered in the warming Boston Common to demonstrate against Trump and the billionaire clique’s rapid power grab overseen by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) abducting people like Rümeysa Öztürk. The event was sponsored by around 118 organizations, from unions to volunteer organizations, including the Federal Unionists Network (FUN) recently founded by militant workers organizing their coworkers whose jobs and union contracts are under direct siege in the tens of thousands by DOGE.
The protest connected the movement to Free Rümeysa with the movement to defend union jobs and social services under attack by the Trump Administration. The event coincided with a historic wave of 1,200 similar protests worldwide that roiled everywhere from coastal cities to inland conservative towns under the banner of “Hands Off 2025.”
At 11:20 am, the “Hands Off” masses marched on Boston City Hall for speeches by Sen. Ed Markey, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Director of APICAN Jaya Savita, Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Chrissy Lynch, AFT-MA president Jessica Tang, AFGE Council 215 president Rich Couture, and co-founder of Trans Resistance Chastity Bowick. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu made a surprise appearance.
The abduction of grad worker Rümeysa Öztürk from Greater Boston was front and center for many speakers, as it was in Washington. The day before, a judge ruled her case would be considered in Vermont instead of Louisiana (which would prove only a temporary victory, as U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III would on April 7 deny the request to order ICE to release Rümeysa. Speakers fused their calls for her release with the specter of the billionaire capture of the federal government and the continued genocide in Gaza. Protestors carried signs painting Trump and Elon Musk as Nazis and the administration’s actions as fascistic.
The mass scale of “Hands Off” could mark a shift in public opinion against the Trump Administration, as well as bridging between the struggles to Free Rümeysa, free Palestine, and free the masses from the billionaire capture of the U.S. federal government. Speakers spoke against wealth inequality and blatant corruption in the state. Sen. Ed Markey called out billionaires for “standing right behind [Trump].” And as liberal organizations delivered speeches, Boston DSA mobilized a legion of organizers to hold organizing conversations to ask rally attendees to fight fascism with long-term organizing while distributing Workers Deserve More pamphlets to demonstrators gathered across the Boston Common.
The demonstration ended with the Dropkick Murphys performing a labor song pulled from the 1930s: Pete Seeger’s “Which Side Are You On?”
That day, Rümeysa released a statement through her attorney:
When the crowd of tens of thousands dispersed from the Boston Common, opinions were mixed. The movement had swelled with popular support fueled by outrage at the abduction of a community member along with a slew of other grievances against the billionaire’s assault on working people. But popular support for the shared demand to free Rümeysa did not mean everyone was a socialist. Liberal flags for every cause were seen beside socialist banners, including at least a few “Hands Off NATO.”
Nonetheless, the local movement did signal a newly-fused political coalition. Corey S, co-chair of Boston DSA, told Working Mass:
As a person of color, Rümeysa Öztürk’s abduction has been a stark reminder that none of us are safe when ICE is able to roam freely. . . but something heartening to see out of all of this is the cooperation between two groups that historically weren’t as aligned: pro-Palestine groups and labor.
Neither flashes of militancy nor mass popular demonstration across Greater Boston has won Öztürk’s release, but ICE abductions of union workers activated new swathes of labor against the Trump Administration. That includes grassroots locals like Öztürk’s SEIU Local 509 and its powerful international SEIU. The largest private sector union is now in open confrontation with the Trump Administration, joining federal workers already organizing against Trump and Musk’s attacks in defense of their jobs and social services that union workers provide to the people. Coalition partners in the Palestine movement continue to rattle Greater Boston with their demands — including divestment, as Rümeysa Öztürk called for in her op-ed for which ICE abducted her. Both movements are working closer together.
Nonetheless, for now, Rümeysa remains unfree.
Henry De Groot is the managing editor of Working Mass and a member of Boston DSA.
Travis Wayne is the deputy managing editor of Working Mass and co-chair of the Somerville branch of Boston DSA.
Reid Jackson is a contributing writer at Working Mass and a former member of the University of Rhode Island YDSA.
Aaron Hall is a biotech worker and a contributing writer for Working Mass.
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