Appeals court orders ICE to return detained Turkish Tufts University student to Vermont

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a judge’s order to bring a Turkish Tufts University student from a Louisiana immigration detention center back to New England for hearings to determine whether her rights were violated and if she should be released.

Denying a government request for a delay, the three-judge panel of the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Rumeysa Ozturk after hearing arguments at a hearing Tuesday. Ozturk has been in Louisiana for over six weeks following an op-ed she co-wrote last year that criticized the school's response to Israel's war in Gaza.

The court ordered Ozturk to be transferred to ICE custody in Vermont no later than May 14.

Immigration court proceedings for Ozturk, initiated in Louisiana, are being conducted separately and Ozturk can participate remotely, the court said.

A district court judge in Vermont had ordered that the 30-year-old doctoral student be brought to the state for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained. Ozturk's lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.

The original deadline was May 1. A hearing on her motion to be released on bail was scheduled in Burlington for Friday, followed by another hearing on May 22.

The Justice Department, which appealed that ruling, said that the immigration court in Louisiana has jurisdiction over Ozturk's case. The appeals court paused the transfer order last week as it considered an emergency motion filed by the government. But on Wednesday, the court did not agree to the request for a longer delay.

The appeals court disagreed that the Vermont court was the wrong place to handle Ozturk's plea for release. It also said the government didn't show “irreparable injury." It said Ozturk's interest in participating in person in the Vermont hearings outweighs administrative and logistical costs to the government.

“The government asserts that it would face difficulties in arranging for Ozturk to appear for her immigration proceedings in Louisiana remotely. But the government has not disputed that it is legally and practically possible for Ozturk to attend removal proceedings remotely,” it said.

A message seeking comment was emailed to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Immigration officials surrounded Ozturk as she walked along a street in a Boston suburb March 25 and drove her to New Hampshire and Vermont before putting her on a plane to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana. Her student visa had been revoked several days earlier, but she was not informed of that, her lawyers said.

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.

“The government now argues that this transfer was improper. The government is wrong,” the appeals court wrote.

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 State Department memo said Ozturk’s visa was revoked following an assessment that her actions ”‘may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”

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.

“No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views,” Esha Bhandari, one of Ozturk's attorneys, said in a statement. “Every day that Rumeysa Ozturk remains in detention is a day too long. 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.”