During a federal trial challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian activists, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Tuesday testified that the orders to target Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Öztürk were so unconventional that he had to seek confirmation on the legality of the arrest.
Patrick Cunningham, the agent who oversaw the arrest of Öztürk in March, told the court in Boston that he had consulted a Department of Homeland Security attorney to check that arresting her based on her visa being revoked was legal. Cunningham also said he had no knowledge of any criminal offense she had committed.
Öztürk, who was in ICE custody for two months, was released in May.
“When you receive information from headquarters at this level, top down, you make the assumption that it’s legally sufficient,” Cunningham, who is part of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations arm in Boston, told the court. “But I did contact our legal counsel to ensure that we’re on solid legal ground.”
Öztürk’s attorney Mahsa Khanbabai said in an email to NBC News that the arrest has “never been about immigration enforcement.
Rather, it “has always been about retaliation and punishment on protected speech,” Khanbabai said. “We are confident the courts will continue to uphold the basic principles of a just and free society.”
Cunningham’s testimony is part of the second week of a trial in which five scholar groups, including the Harvard University faculty chapter of the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, are alleging that the detentions of Öztürk and others and attempted deportations violated the First Amendment. Öztürk was grabbed by agents off a Massachusetts street in late March, with the DHS accusing her of engaging “in activities in support of Hamas.”
The doctoral student co-wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper last year that called on Tufts to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from companies with ties to Israel. The university has said the essay did not violate its policies.
Cunningham was among four Homeland Security agents to testify in the case that day. He told the court that his role involved sharing information that HSI knew about Öztürk to “effectively put agents on the street and try and locate her.” He also said that he had read the op-ed Öztürk had written prior to the arrest.
“I didn’t see anything in the op-ed suggesting she committed a crime,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham, whose career largely dealt with drug enforcement and investigations into money laundering, said that he had little to no previous experience with arrests based on visa revocations. But after Trump’s inauguration in January, the agency held several meetings about these types of arrests and how they now would be a priority. Öztürk’s arrest was based on orders that came from DHS headquarters, he said.
“I can’t recall a time that it’s come top down like this with a visa revocation— under my purview anyway,” he said. “With the superiors that were inquiring about this, it made it a priority, because we work for them.”
Öztürk was moved to three locations after her arrest before she ended up in an ICE facility in rural Louisiana. Judge William K. Sessions III in Massachusetts ordered her release in May.
“I am not going to put a travel restriction on her, because, frankly, I don’t find that she poses any risk of flight,” Sessions said.
The trial is expected to conclude this week, with closing arguments slated for Friday. Earlier in the proceedings, Peter Hatch, a senior DHS investigations official, revealed in a bombshell testimony that the names of most of the student protesters who were flagged to the agency for analysis came from the anonymous group Canary Mission. The controversial organization publishes a detailed database of students, professors and others who it says have shared anti-Israel and antisemitic viewpoints. For years, the group has drawn allegations of doxxing and harassment,
“I can say that Canary Mission is not part of the U.S. government. It is not information that we would take as an authoritative source, and we do not work with the individuals who create the website,” Hatch told the court. “I don’t know who creates the website. We don’t have a relationship with the creators of the website.”
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