US President Donald Trump said he would have “no trouble” directing his administration to disclose the evidence behind the government’s accusations against a Turkish doctoral student detained after writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed, even as he admitted he was unfamiliar with the case.
The student, who remains in federal custody following a March 25 arrest by plainclothes immigration agents in Massachusetts, has been accused by US officials of posing a threat to national security.
Her detention came more than a year after she co-authored a campus newspaper op-ed calling for Tufts University to divest from companies linked to Israel and to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza.
The US State Department revoked her visa shortly before the arrest, though an internal memo cited by The Washington Post found no evidence of extremism, antisemitism or ties to violence.
Speaking to Time magazine in a wide-ranging interview, Trump said he would look into the case when asked whether the Department of Justice should release evidence substantiating the claim.
“I would have no trouble with it, no,” he said. “I’ll look into it, but I’m not aware of the particular event.”
The student, Rümeysa Öztürk, a 30-year-old PhD candidate at Tufts, has been held in a Louisiana detention facility under conditions her lawyers describe as medically dangerous and legally unjustified.
Rights advocates, academic groups and multiple Jewish organizations have called for her release, saying her arrest marks a troubling escalation in the crackdown on campus speech critical of Israel.
Turkish authorities say they are closely monitoring the case, but President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — who portrays himself as a leading defender of the Palestinian cause on the world stage — has remained conspicuously silent about Öztürk.
Critics say Erdoğan’s silence reflects a calculated effort to avoid angering President Trump, with whom he shares a relationship both leaders have openly praised.