On March 25th, Rümeysa Öztürk, an international student at Tufts University, was on the phone with her mother while walking to the campus interfaith center. Suddenly, she was surrounded by ICE agents in plainclothes and masks who stopped her and grabbed her wrists. She screamed in fear at the ambush, desperately crying out to her mother to call a friend for help, while the agents led her away. The video of the incident was chilling.

The next day, what happened to Rümeysa Öztürk became front page news. An international student had been arrested, seemingly because of an op-ed she wrote in a student newspaper.

In the six weeks that Rümeysa Öztürk was held in detention, she became a symbol of the lengths the Trump administration was willing to go in the largest deportation effort in United States’ history.

Globe reporters Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio and Mark Arsenault spent months uncovering what led to the arrest and what happened after, inside and outside of detention. This podcast reveals the in-depth story of one student and the implications for freedom of speech and democracy in America.

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