Tufts student says she has suffered multiple asthma attacks in Ice custody.
Tufts student says she has suffered multiple asthma attacks in Ice custody.
Rümeysa Öztürk says she’s experienced difficulty getting care and had her hijab ripped off without permission.
Maanvi Singh/The Guardian
Thu 10 Apr 2025 22.09 EDT
Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student who was detained by US immigration authorities last month, says she has had multiple asthma attacks since she was arrested and detained and has had difficulty getting medical attention.
Öztürk, 30, was detained by masked, plainclothes officers as she walked in a Boston-area suburb on 25 March. A judge ordered that the Turkish national and doctoral student who was in the US on an F-1 student visa cannot be deported without a court order. But she remains detained at the South Louisiana Ice processing center in Basile.
On Thursday, Öztürk’s attorneys asked the federal court in Vermont to release her – or to move her from Louisiana to Vermont – while her case is heard.
In a declaration filed by her lawyers, she said that while at the Louisiana facility, she faced delays getting care for an asthma attack and was initially refused access to fresh air. When she was eventually taken to the medical center, she says a nurse told her to take off her hijab. When Öztürk refused, she said, the nurse ripped off her hijab without permission.
“After a few minutes I put my hijab back on. But they did nothing to treat my asthma and gave me a few ibuprofen,” she said.
In her declaration, Öztürk said that her holding cell was crowded beyond capacity and the unsanitary, damp conditions was triggering her asthma.
“The conditions in the facility are very unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane,” she said. “There is a mouse in our cell. The boxes they provide for our clothing are very dirty and they don’t give us adequate hygiene supplies.”
Öztürk is not the first to raise concerns about the conditions in the South Louisiana Ice processing center. In an August 2024 report by immigration advocates based on facility visits and interviews with detainees, dozens of women held at the center reported being denied medical care and offered rotten food.
In a December 2024 complaint from the ACLU of Louisiana, filed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) civil rights division, attorneys wrote: “Guards left detained people suffering from severe conditions like external bleeding, tremors, and sprained limbs unattended to, refusing them access to diagnostic care.”
That complaint was filed before the Trump administration moved to gut the DHS civil rights division.
The facility, which is located about 90 miles west of Baton Rouge, is one of several in the region run by Geo Group, a multi-billion-dollar prison company that contracts with the federal government to hold detained immigrants.
Rümeysa Öztürk says she’s experienced difficulty getting care and had her hijab ripped off without permission.
Maanvi Singh/The Guardian
Thu 10 Apr 2025 22.09 EDT
Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student who was detained by US immigration authorities last month, says she has had multiple asthma attacks since she was arrested and detained and has had difficulty getting medical attention.
Öztürk, 30, was detained by masked, plainclothes officers as she walked in a Boston-area suburb on 25 March. A judge ordered that the Turkish national and doctoral student who was in the US on an F-1 student visa cannot be deported without a court order. But she remains detained at the South Louisiana Ice processing center in Basile.
On Thursday, Öztürk’s attorneys asked the federal court in Vermont to release her – or to move her from Louisiana to Vermont – while her case is heard.
In a declaration filed by her lawyers, she said that while at the Louisiana facility, she faced delays getting care for an asthma attack and was initially refused access to fresh air. When she was eventually taken to the medical center, she says a nurse told her to take off her hijab. When Öztürk refused, she said, the nurse ripped off her hijab without permission.
“After a few minutes I put my hijab back on. But they did nothing to treat my asthma and gave me a few ibuprofen,” she said.
In her declaration, Öztürk said that her holding cell was crowded beyond capacity and the unsanitary, damp conditions was triggering her asthma.
“The conditions in the facility are very unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane,” she said. “There is a mouse in our cell. The boxes they provide for our clothing are very dirty and they don’t give us adequate hygiene supplies.”
Öztürk is not the first to raise concerns about the conditions in the South Louisiana Ice processing center. In an August 2024 report by immigration advocates based on facility visits and interviews with detainees, dozens of women held at the center reported being denied medical care and offered rotten food.
In a December 2024 complaint from the ACLU of Louisiana, filed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) civil rights division, attorneys wrote: “Guards left detained people suffering from severe conditions like external bleeding, tremors, and sprained limbs unattended to, refusing them access to diagnostic care.”
That complaint was filed before the Trump administration moved to gut the DHS civil rights division.
The facility, which is located about 90 miles west of Baton Rouge, is one of several in the region run by Geo Group, a multi-billion-dollar prison company that contracts with the federal government to hold detained immigrants.
