A federal appeals court has ruled that a Turkish Tufts University student who has been detained by immigration authorities for six weeks in Louisiana must be transferred to Vermont.
A district court judge in Vermont had ordered that Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student, be brought to the state by May 1 for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained.
Stream NBC10 Boston news for free, 24/7, wherever you are.
WATCH HEREThe U.S. Justice Department appealed the order, setting in motion a pause on her return, but after hearing arguments on Tuesday, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the Trump administration to comply with the transfer order within one week.
Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process. Her case gained national attention when a video showed immigration officials surrounding her as she walked along a street in a Boston suburb March 25. She was detained and driven to New Hampshire and Vermont before she was put a plane to the detention center in Basile, Louisiana, where she remains.
Get updates on what's happening in Boston to your inbox with our News Headlines newsletter.
SIGN UP Her attorneys consider the ruling a win but say there's still more to do.
“Rümeysa has suffered six weeks in crowded confinement without adequate access to medical care and in conditions that doctors say risk exacerbating her asthma attacks. Her detention — over an op-ed she co-authored in her student newspaper — is as cruel as it is unconstitutional,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director, ACLU of Massachusetts. “Today, we moved one step closer to returning Rümeysa to her community and studies in Massachusetts.”
Ozturk’s lawyers first filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts, but they did not know where she was and were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she was detained. A Massachusetts judge later transferred the case to Vermont.
During the appeals court hearing Tuesday, the judges questioned Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign on why the government did not tell Ozturk's lawyers where she was sooner. He cited “operational security concerns.”
They also questioned him over what the government said was Ozturk's inability to name the “immediate custodian" in her plea for release, the person who has direct control and responsibility for someone who is detained. Ozturk's lawyers named Patricia Hyde, Boston-based ICE enforcement and removal field office director.
Ensign said it should have been the warden of the Vermont jail, even though Ozturk was in transit there at the time.
Ozturk was “seized by people who are not in uniform and who were masked and hooded,” Judge Susan Carney said. “And to all outward appearances, they could have been private actors.”
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in March, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.
On the same day as Ozturk's hearing, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals also heard motions filed on Mohsen Mahdawi, who led protests at Columbia University against Israel's war in Gaza. He was arrested by immigration officials during an interview about finalizing his U.S. citizenship.
Mahdawi was released on bail, but the Justice Department was arguing to detain him once again.
Mahdawi, 34, has been a legal permanent resident of the US for 10 years. He was placed in a Vermont state prison on April 14. In his release order, U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford said Mahdawi has raised a “substantial claim that the government arrested him to stifle speech with which it disagrees.”
More on Rumeysa Ozturk's case
Mahdawi’s release allows him to travel outside his home state of Vermont and attend graduation next month in New York. He recently completed coursework at Columbia and planned to begin a master’s degree program there in the fall.
The court did not immediately rule on Mahdawi's case after the hearing Tuesday.
