Tufts student challenging immigration detention must be sent to Vermont, court rules

By Nate Raymond

A federal appeals court has ordered President Donald Trump's administration to transfer a Turkish student at Tufts University to Vermont for a bail hearing from Louisiana, where she is being detained by immigration authorities after engaging in pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus.

Wednesday's ruling by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals marked a victory for Rumeysa Ozturk, and brought her a step closer to a hearing at which a judge could decide to order her release after six weeks in custody.

Her case has become a high-profile example of the Republican president's efforts to deport pro-Palestinian activists on U.S. campuses who have spoken out against Israel's war in Gaza.

A three-judge panel rejected the administration's request to pause a judge's April 18 order requiring Ozturk to be transferred to Vermont so she could be available for a bail hearing and proceedings in the legal challenge to her detention.

"We're grateful the court refused the government's attempt to keep her isolated from her community and her legal counsel as she pursues her case for release," said Esha Bhandari, a lawyer for Ozturk at the American Civil Liberties Union.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions in Burlington had previously scheduled the bail hearing for Friday, but the 2nd Circuit gave the administration until May 14 to transfer Ozturk to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Vermont, which could result in bail proceedings being postponed.

The administration could potentially ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, stressed that the ruling "does not prevent the continued detention of Ms. Ozturk."

Tricia McLaughlin, the spokesperson, in a statement said the department "will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country."

Ozturk, a PhD student and Fulbright scholar, was arrested on a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on March 25 after the U.S. State Department revoked her student visa, citing an op-ed she co-authored in Tufts' student newspaper last year.

That opinion piece criticized the school's response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel after the onset of the war in Gaza, and to "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide."

Her arrest by masked agents was captured in a viral video and prompted immediate litigation. Her lawyers called her detention unlawful and a violation of her free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

She was sent to Louisiana the day after her arrest, after being briefly held in Vermont.

A lawsuit filed in Boston was later transferred to Vermont, where she was being held when the case was filed, over the objections of the Trump administration, which argued she could only challenge her detention where she was today being detained, Louisiana.

Requiring her to litigate in Louisiana would mean any appeals in her case would be heard by the most conservative federal appeals court nationally, and her lawyers have argued the administration moved her to engage in "forum shopping."

The administration told the 2nd Circuit that Congress had made clear that any challenges to government deportation decisions must proceed in immigration court, rather than federal district court like the one Ozturk will attend in Vermont.

But the panel in Wednesday's decision rejected the venue arguments and said Ozturk's legal challenge concerned only her arrest and detention. The court said her lawsuit could be resolved without affecting the immigration proceedings.

"She asserts that the government arrested and detained her to prevent speech with which it disagrees," the panel said. "Such an act would be a violation of the Constitution - quite separate from the removal procedures followed by the immigration courts."