Blog / 2025 / Portrait of Rümeysa Öztürk: Only Caring about Your Own Rights Is Exactly How You Lose Them

This is Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University graduate student who was taken off the street a month and a half ago by six agents from Trump’s Department of Homeland Security who had covered their faces and who were not wearing uniforms.

Öztürk is a Turkish citizen and a Fulbright Scholar who was in the US on a student visa. In March 2024, she was one of four students who co-wrote an article in The Tufts Daily, criticizing the university’s response to protests against the ongoing war in Gaza. Almost a year later, in February 2025, Öztürk’s name, photo, and work history were published online by an organization that doxes people who it says “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.”

After Öztürk’s detention, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared at a press conference: “we gave you a visa to come study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”

ICE also released a statement accusing Öztürk of supporting Hamas, but did not provide evidence. Öztürk was taken off the street without warning. She had not been notified ahead of time that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security had revoked her visa.

Öztürk is currently being held in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, far from her community in Massachusetts. At that prison, she’s subject poor medical care and repeated asthma attacks due in part to appalling sanitary conditions. She’s had her headscarf removed without her permission by medical staff, and she’s been in a cell with an official capacity of fourteen, but in which 24 people are imprisoned.

It pains me to paint Öztürk. It pained me to paint Kilmar Abrego Garcia as well. It pains me that I haven’t had time to paint Mahmoud Kahlil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Rasha Alawieh, Karim Daoud, Hannah Dugan, Andry Hernandez Romero, Jerce Reyes Barrios, José Hermosillo, Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, the three US citizens all under the age of seven as well as their Honduran-born mothers who were recently deported, the two hundred and some immigrants who were sent to prison in El Salvador, the Oklahoma City family whose home was invaded in the early morning by ICE agents, and the many others whom the Department of Homeland Security has been terrorizing since January.

Every day, I live with the knowledge that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has gutted the Constitution. Every day, I live with the certainty that only caring about your own rights is exactly how you lose them.