Federal judge orders Tufts University student detained in Louisiana transferred back to Vermont – VTDigger

The case of a Tufts University student who is currently detained in Louisiana will continue in Vermont, a federal judge in Burlington ruled late Friday. Judge William Sessions ordered Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) transfer the doctoral student, Rümeysa Öztürk, back to a Vermont facility by May 1. The federal government has four days to appeal.

“(T)he Court concludes that Ms. Ozturk has presented viable and serious habeas claims which warrant urgent review on the merits,” Sessions wrote in a 74-page ruling. “The Court plans to move expeditiously to a bail hearing and final disposition of the habeas petition, as Ms. Ozturk’s claims require no less.”

Öztürk, who is Turkish, has been held in the ICE detention facility in Basile, Louisiana since March 26. The prior evening she was arrested by masked and plainclothes officers on the street near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts. She was then whisked through New Hampshire and held in a St. Albans immigration facility overnight before being flown out of Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport early the following morning.  

ICE argued that transferring Öztürk to Louisiana was necessary because “there was no available bedspace for [her] at a facility where she could appear for a hearing” in New England, according to court filings. In response, Öztürk’s lawyers submitted an affidavit from a Maine attorney who stated there were “at least sixteen open beds” at the Cumberland County Jail in Portland the night of Öztürk’s arrest.

In his ruling, Sessions wrote that “Ms. Öztürk has raised significant constitutional concerns with her arrest and detention which merit full and fair consideration in this forum.”

The government appears to have targeted Öztürk for co-writing an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized university leaders for their response to demands that the school divest from companies with ties to Israel, her attorneys have said. She has not been charged with a crime.

“I am pleased that the federal court has ruled to bring Rümeysa home to New England and look forward to her bail hearing so she can be set free,” Mahsa Khanbabai, one of Öztürk’s attorneys, said in a Friday press release from the ACLU of Vermont. “A university op-ed advocating for human rights and freedom for the Palestinian people should not lead to imprisonment.”

A bail hearing is set for May 9, with a hearing on Öztürk’s habeas petition set for May 22.