A Tufts University student from Turkey being held in a Louisiana immigration facility must be returned to New England no later than May 1 to determine whether she was illegally detained for co-writing an op-ed piece in the student newspaper, a federal judge ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention in Burlington, Vermont, with a bail hearing set for May 9 and a hearing on the petition’s merits on May 22. Ozturk’s lawyers had requested that she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont, while the Justice Department argued that an immigration court in Louisiana had jurisdiction.
“The Court concludes that this case will continue in this court with Ms. Ozturk physically present for the remainder of the proceedings,” the judge wrote. “Ms. Ozturk has presented viable and serious habeas claims which warrant urgent review on the merits. 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.”
The ruling came more than three weeks after masked immigration officials surrounded the 30-year-old doctoral student 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. An immigration judge denied her request for bond Wednesday, citing “danger and flight risk” as the rationale.
Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or who have been stopped from entering the U.S. after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressing support for Palestinians. A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the U.S. can deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a national security risk.
Ozturk’s lawyers first filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts, but they didn’t know where she was and were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she was detained. Ozturk herself said she unsuccessfully made multiple requests to speak to a lawyer.
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.
Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process. In his ruling, Sessions said she has “plausibly pled constitutional violations” but said such pleadings weren’t enough to warrant her immediate release.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last month, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.