Read the full piece in The New York Times

Washington (April 25, 2025) - Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Representatives Jim McGovern (MA-02) and Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) this morning published an op-ed in The New York Times titled: “We Visited Rümeysa Öztürk in Detention. What We Saw Was a Warning to Us All.”

This week, Senator Markey and Representatives McGovern and Pressley met with Ms. Öztürk, a Turkish national and fifth-year doctoral student at Tufts University, who has been unlawfully detained by ICE and transported to Louisiana from her Somerville, Massachusetts, community in retaliation for her protected speech. The lawmakers called on the Trump administration to immediately release Ms. Öztürk and urged every American to defend the Constitution.

We Visited Rümeysa Öztürk in Detention. What We Saw Was a Warning to Us All.

By Edward J. Markey, Jim McGovern, and Ayanna Pressley

Published April 25, 2025, by The New York Times

We recently visited Ms. Öztürk at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, La., operated by the for-profit company Geo Secure Services, contracted by the federal government. It’s part of the network of ICE facilities in Louisiana that the American Civil Liberties Union has described as a “black hole” — hard to reach and isolated, making visits from attorneys and family members prohibitively difficult and expensive.

What we found was not just a young woman locked up without charge but also a democracy being put to the test.

Read the full opinion piece in The New York Times.

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