Targeting visa holders

IT was an otherwise ordinary evening in Somerville, Massachusetts — a suburb of Boston. The last week of March had finally begun and the weather was warming up, heralding the arrival of spring.

Thirty-year-old Rumeysa Ozturk was going to join some friends for iftar. Ozturk, who has a Master’s degree from Columbia University in New York, was a doctoral student at Tufts University. Quiet and soft-spoken, Ozturk, a Turkish national, had a valid student visa and was a Fulbright scholar.