Video shows masked agents arresting Tufts student on Somerville street

SOMERVILLE — The plainclothes officer walked up to Rumeysa Ozturk on a residential street just after 5:15 p.m. and grabbed her by the wrists.

Then another man approached her from behind and took away her phone, interrupting a panicked conversation she was having in Turkish. Within seconds, five officers were surrounding Ozturk, a Tufts PhD student from Turkey, and she was pleading with them, according to a security camera recording of the arrest obtained by the Globe.

“Can I see your…” she started to say.

“You’re fine,” an agent told her.

Then a man watching the arrest from a nearby balcony on Mason Street near the Tufts campus asked what was going on, according to a passerby who witnessed the arrest and spoke with the Globe Wednesday morning. “We’re the police,” an agent said, according to the video.

“You don’t look like it,” the man on the balcony said. “Why are you hiding your faces?”

The video and eyewitness account document what Ozturk’s lawyer has described in court filings as an unlawful detention by the Department of Homeland Security. The lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, said Wednesday afternoon that she still does not know where her client is being held and has not been able to contact her. Ozturk, who is in the US on a student visa, has not been charged with a crime. She appears to have been swept up in the Trump administration’s campaign to detain and deport pro-Palestinian campus activists.

After surrounding Ozturk and pulling masks over their faces, one of the officers said: “We’re the police, okay? Relax.”

The officers then removed her backpack, pulled her arms behind her back, and handcuffed her, according to the video. The eyewitness, a Somerville resident who saw the arrest while walking his dog, said Ozturk was visibly distressed, crying and saying, “I’m a student.”

One agent tells Oztruk to “take a breath,” the video shows.

Neighbor Mike Mathis spoke with reporters as he shows his video of the arrest. Lane Turner/Globe Staff

Two officers led her by the arms to an unmarked SUV with tinted windows and loaded her into the back seat.

The agents drove away approximately two and a half minutes after first approaching Ozturk.

The eyewitness, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the government, said he was shocked by what he saw. As he walked away, another agent approached him. The man pulled a mask over his face and silently followed the witness for a block.

Adriana Callen, a Tufts senior who lives across the street, said she hadn’t seen the arrests, but had noticed the cars loitering out front on Tuesday afternoon. “We didn’t even put it together until hours later,” she said. “So it definitely was quite shocking. I wasn’t even honestly sure until right now.”

A flyer left on a Mason Street porch gives residents concerned by immigration authority actions a phone number to call. Lane Turner/Globe Staff

Nick Stoico of the Globe staff contributed to this report.