Missing Turkish Scientist Located in US Detention After Reporting Corruption in Federal Lab

Furkan Dölek, a Turkish physicist who had been reported missing for more than a week, was located this week at the Buffalo Federal Detention Center after family members lost contact following his detention near the U.S.-Canada border. U.S. immigration officials confirmed he is in federal custody; Turkish and international outlets have reported that Dölek’s detention followed concerns he raised at a U.S. federal laboratory.

Dölek’s case has become a flashpoint in an escalating national debate over new immigration enforcement in the U.S. Since early 2025, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has been ordered to sharply increase interior arrests, a change that has produced high-profile sweeps and "rapid-response" strikes in cities and workplaces, tactics that civil-liberties advocates and local officials say cross legal and ethical lines, as legal immigrants are increasingly reported missing. Those critics argue the tactics have sometimes involved aggressive entries, no notice to detainees’ families, and limited transparency about detainee locations, which they say undermines due process and community trust.

Legal groups and immigrant-rights organizations have already filed lawsuits and public complaints, alleging that some of the recent raids violate constitutional protections and abuse discretion in ways that disproportionately target vulnerable populations. Officials from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security counter that targeted arrests only focus on individuals with removable status and criminal records, and that mischaracterizations of their operations have spread on social media.

Beyond the human and legal stakes, experts warn the crackdown may be imposing a far more tangible cost on the United States: the loss of critical scientific talent and the economic damage that follows when researchers, students, and high-skilled workers see the country as inhospitable. Several think tanks and academic analyses published this year estimate that large-scale deportations or the sustained deterrence of foreign talent could shave hundreds of billions from US GDP over the coming decade and damage innovation pipelines that have long powered American economic growth. “The U.S. economy and its research enterprise are built on international mobility,” said a recent analysis from the Center for American Progress as colleges and laboratories, especially those in border-state regions and technology hubs, report immediate practical effects: collaborators cancel visits, grant proposals lose co-investigators, and students from abroad rethink long-term plans to train and remain in the U.S. Those micro-level disruptions aggregate into bigger losses: delays in experiments, reduced capacity to staff labs, and the erosion of long-term research networks.

Economists point to specific mechanisms for the damage. High-skill immigrants contribute to research and development, boost productivity through complementary skills, and are disproportionately represented among tech founders and patent holders. When enforcement policies raise the risk of detention or deportation, or when scientists self-select out of opportunities in the U.S. because of fear or instability, those dynamic effects are lost. A recent budget-modeling study projected that mass deportations could cost the federal budget and the economy hundreds of billions over ten years, even under optimistic assumptions about labor adjustments.

Dölek’s family and lawyers say they had difficulty obtaining timely information about his whereabouts, a complaint frequently lodged by relatives of those detained during recent ICE operations. Such gaps in communication compound the personal harms and commonly fuel broader public outrage. For advocates, the visibility of mistreatment of a Turkish scientist among the detained underlines the argument that the current enforcement strategy risks sidelining people who contribute directly to scientific resilience. For now, Dölek’s detention has intensified calls for clearer rules and better oversight, from faster consular access for foreign nationals to policies that protect critical talent.

Edited by: Ömer Gökce