Judge says detained Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk must be moved to Vermont

Tufts University PhD candidate Rumeysa Ozturk must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday in a blow to the Trump administration.

Ozturk was detained by plainclothes immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) agents wearing masks on a street close to her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, on 25 March, as she was on her way to break her fast for Ramadan.

She is one of several foreign students in the US on legal visas who have been arrested by the Trump administration in its crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices.

Ozturk’s lawyers said she was arrested for co-authoring an opinion article in a student newspaper. She has not been charged with any crime.

Ozturk was driven to multiple places in three states - including New Hampshire and Vermont - before being flown thousands of miles to an ICE detention centre in Basile, Louisiana, making it difficult for her to gain access to legal help and community.

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Activists and legal experts have said moving her to Louisiana put her in a court system that could be more favourable to Trump’s deportation push.

Last month, a judge in Massachusetts ordered that Ozturk’s case be moved to Vermont, where she was previously being held. Judge William Sessions III, who is overseeing the Vermont case, gave the federal government a 1 May deadline to transfer Ozturk.

The federal government appealed that decision. 

Wednesday’s ruling is a strike against the federal government’s push to keep Ozturk in Louisiana, a Republican-leaning state. It likely marks the first time that a federal appeals court has determined in which state the Trump administration can detain students.

Shezza Abboushi Dallal, a lawyer from Clear, one of the organisations representing Ozturk and other detained pro-Palestinian students, told Middle East Eye on Wednesday that the Trump administration faced a defeat in its bid to delay and detain Ozturk. 

“We are hoping for her return to Vermont. Another deployed delay strategy that the government waged over the course of the past few weeks is to try to appeal the district of Vermont’s order that she be returned from Louisiana…the court earlier today, 7 May, rejected that effort.”

Ozturk is a former Fulbright scholar who was pursuing her PhD at Tufts University in child study and human development when she was detained.  

Since then, Tufts University and the local community have rallied around her. More than 20 friends, colleagues, and professors, including the president of Tufts University, have sent letters of support to the court detailing Ozturk's dedication to her work and community and asking for her release.

On 10 April, for the first time in years, Tufts Democrats and Republicans drafted and signed a joint statement condemning the Trump administration’s arrest and detention of Ozturk, as well as the government's broader attack on international students and the right to free speech. 

On 11 April, a coalition of 27 Jewish organisations, including J Street, Bend the Arc, Jalsa, and Temple Emanu-El, has also come to Ozturk's defence, submitting a proposed amicus brief to the court.

middleeasteye.net