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On the night she was picked up by immigration agents near Tufts University, Rümeysa Öztürk said she had no idea who the men were who took her phone and hustled her into a van. For hours on a long drive north, she was shackled and feared she might be killed, she said in a statement filed in federal court in Vermont.

In the first personal recounting of her experience since being on March 25, Öztürk describes a harrowing journey from her neighborhood in Somerville to a cell in Vermont, where she was locked up overnight before being put on a flight to Louisiana early the next day.

Her was filed alongside a motion from her attorneys seeking her immediate release from detention while they fight the revocation of her visa. Öztürk has not been charged with a crime. A legal challenge to her arrest was transferred to Vermont after a federal judge in Boston the case did not belong in Massachusetts or Louisiana.

The 30-year-old doctoral student, a Turkish national, at first thought she’d been abducted after a doxxing incident: “They were all wearing civilian clothes. I thought this was a strange situation and was sure they were going to kill me,� she wrote in the statement.

The doxxing had happened a month earlier. That’s when she was added to the so-called Canary Mission list, an anonymously run website that compiles personal information on students, professors and others in the U.S. the website considers to be anti-Israel or antisemitic. After that, Öztürk said she’d begun to be afraid she could be targeted for violence.

The men who detained her while she was on the phone with her mother that March evening said they were police. She asked to see their badges. One did flash his, but Öztürk said it was so quick she couldn’t read it.

Once in the unmarked car, she asked again who they were and where they were taking her. They told her she was being arrested, but didn’t explain why, she said.

The next stop was a parking lot, where she saw eight or nine officers huddled together. She said she was taken out of the car and shackled at the feet and her belly. She asked to speak to her attorney, but they told her no. She described the officers as “scary and harsh.�

They then shuffled her into another car with a different set of officers and took her to a different parking lot, which she thought was in or near Lawrence, outside an office building. She asked one of the officers if she was physically safe, at which point, she said, “he seemed to feel guilty.�

“We are not monsters,� the officer told her, according to the statement. “We do what the government tells us.�

Finally, she said they told her they were taking her to Vermont, because there were no detention centers for women in Massachusetts.

Öztürk had been fasting all day for Ramadan, and was on her way to an iftar dinner when she was picked up. By now she was hungry, and told the officers she needed a meal. They stopped to get her a snack, which turned out to be crackers and water. “But I didn’t drink and eat it because I was worried they could have poisoned it.�

Again, she told them she wanted to speak with her lawyer.

“I was afraid that if something happened to me, no one would know where I was,� she said.

A woman officer joined the group but didn’t speak to her, and avoided eye contact as the others did. Öztürk prayed in the car.

They drove next to Lebanon, N.H., stopping at what she said appeared to be a police station.

“This is when I first thought it might be a U.S. law enforcement agency detaining me rather than kidnappers related to the doxxing,� she said. Inside the police station, she asked their names. And she asked to use the bathroom.

She wanted to call her lawyer. But they told her she’d have to wait until they got to Vermont. But the story changed when they arrived, she said: They would not let her make a call.

In court filings, attorneys for the federal government said the fact that Öztürk was not allowed to contact her attorney is “consistent with sound operational and security practices.�

“Many detainees may be desperate to avoid the prospect of removal from the United States,� they wrote. “Permitting them to communicate about their location while enroute between detention facilities would raise serious security concerns,� adding it would be “unreasonable� for officers to assess each detainee’s risk level.

Öztürk spent the night on a hard bench in a cell with a toilet and no soap, she said. Officers came in several times, asking questions about “wanting to apply for asylum� and if she was a member of a terrorist organization.

She asked where they were taking her. Louisiana, they told her. “I hope we treated you with respect,� she recalled one officer saying.

At 4 a.m., they were on the move again. They left for the airport, she said, and she was again in handcuffs. “I gave up asking to speak to a lawyer again.�

“I felt like I could not breathe,� Öztürk said, as she waited in the Atlanta airport with ICE agents en route to Louisiana.

She’s lived with asthma for about three years, she said, taking daily medication and keeping an inhaler on her for emergencies. As she struggled with an asthma attack in the airport, she said, she had the inhaler, but not the medication.

“I asked for the medication I am prescribed to treat asthma attacks but I was told that there was no place to buy it and that I would get it at my final destination,� she said. The attack subsided, she said, but she was in pain.

From there, she was taken to the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana. She described seeing “many women and men handcuffed and belly chained.�

“We were placed in a cage-like vehicle and could not communicate with the officers detaining us. We waited in this place for 3-4 hours. We had no access to food or water,� she said.

She eventually arrived at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, where she said she sleeps with 23 other people in a cell meant for 14.

“None of us are able to sleep through the night. They come into the cell often and walk around triggering the fluorescent lights. They shout in the cell to wake up those who work in the kitchen around 3:30 am each day,� she said.

It was at that facility that she had her second asthma attack since being detained.

“Once they finally took me to the medical center, the nurse took my temperature. She said ‘you need to take that thing off your head,� � Öztürk recounted, and the nurse “took off my hejab without asking my permission,� she said.

She was given a few ibuprofen, she said, but “nothing to treat my asthma.�

She would go on to have two more asthma attacks. The nurse told her during the third that “it was all in my mind,� and took her to the medical center but again was not treated. By the time she had her fourth attack, she stopped asking for help.

“I used my inhaler and waited for it to pass. I was in pain and very scared but I didn’t ask to go to the medical center because I don’t feel that they address my medical needs,� she said, adding she “doesn’t feel safe� there.

Overall, she describes the conditions in the facility as “unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane.� She said a woman hit on the head with a tray fainted and had to wait 15 minutes for treatment. Guards threaten to withhold meals if detainees don’t cooperate with orders, she said, and she has not been provided a prayer rug or a Quran.

In the signed declaration, Öztürk said that she has nine months left to complete her doctoral degree, which she has been working on for five years. She’s trying to work on her dissertation while in detention, but said it took nearly two weeks to get “a few pieces of paper and pens.�

She also said she is scheduled to present at a conference in Minnesota later this month and plans to teach a summer class and mentor college students.

“I pray everyday for my release so I can go back to my home and community in Somerville,� she said. She ended her statement saying, “I want to return to Tufts to resume all of my cherished work.�

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