A federal judge ordered President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday to transfer a Tufts University student being held in Louisiana to Vermont while he weighs her claims that U.S. immigration authorities unlawfully arrested her based on her pro-Palestinian advocacy.
The decision by U.S. District Judge William Sessions in Burlington marked an early victory for Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, in her continuing bid to be released from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s custody and return to her studies following her March 25 arrest in Massachusetts.
Sessions said Ozturk “has raised significant constitutional concerns with her arrest and detention which merit full and fair consideration in this forum,” and he scheduled a May 9 hearing to consider releasing her on bail.
He said Ozturk’s evidence supported her claim that she was detained to punish her for co-authoring an opinion piece in Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized the school’s response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel after the onset of war and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
Sessions said Ozturk presented evidence to support finding her free-speech rights under the U.S. Constitution were violated, saying the “op-ed is self-evidently speech regarding public issues.”
“The government has so far offered no evidence to support an alternative, lawful motivation or purpose for Ms. Ozturk’s detention,” Sessions, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, wrote.
The judge stayed the effect of his order for four days to allow for a potential appeal. He also scheduled arguments on the merits of Ozturk’s case on May 22.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, had no comment.
Jessie Rossman, a lawyer for Ozturk with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, in a statement called the ruling “a crucial step for upholding the rule of law in our country.”
Ozturk’s arrest by masked agents on a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville was captured in a viral video that has turned her case into 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 as part of his hardline approach to immigration.
Ozturk is a PhD student and Fulbright scholar studying at Tufts, located in Massachusetts. She was arrested after the U.S. State Department revoked her student visa, citing the opinion piece.
Sessions during an April 14 hearing questioned whether the administration would insist it could not release Ozturk even if he declared her arrest unlawful, potentially resulting in a “constitutional crisis.”
His question echoed broader concerns raised by legal experts and Democrats in recent weeks about whether the Trump administration would comply with unfavorable rulings amid tensions with the federal judiciary.
The night before Ozturk was transferred to Louisiana, a lawyer for her sued in Massachusetts to challenge her arrest. A judge quickly ordered authorities to not remove Ozturk from Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice.
Yet by the time the lawsuit was filed, Ozturk was already out of state and being held in Vermont, from where she was flown the next day to Louisiana.
Rather than dismiss the case as the administration wanted, a federal judge in Boston on April 4 determined it could still be heard in Vermont, given that was her location when the lawsuit was filed, and sent it there.
Her lawyers during an April 14 hearing urged Sessions to order Ozturk immediately released on bail or, alternatively, to require her to be moved to Vermont and out of the detention facility in Basile, Louisiana.
Her lawyers have said that since being taken into ICE custody, Ozturk has suffered several asthma attacks and that her health will remain at risk while at the facility in Louisiana, which “is notorious for its inadequate medical care.”
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