Minara Helen: A Vermont judge on Friday ordered the government to release Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk while her case proceeds, making her at least the second student freed from custody under the Trump administration.
Judge William Sessions III said the government didn’t provide sufficient evidence justifying her detention in Louisiana. The only evidence the government gave was a pro-Palestinian opinion piece she co-wrote for a student newspaper, he said.
“Her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens,” he said, “anyone of them who now may avoid exercising their First Amendment rights.”
He ordered Ozturk, who is Turkish, to be released on her own recognizance, meaning she didn’t need to post bail. She will need to return for court hearings. Her release comes about a week after a separate Vermont judge ordered Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi to be let out of custody. A Ph.D. student on a student visa, Ozturk was one of several foreign-born students held in Louisiana, far from their legal teams and schools. Federal agents arrested Ozturk in March on a Massachusetts street in an apprehension that drew national attention. Her lawyers say her detention was in retaliation for the opinion piece. She hasn’t been charged with a crime. Ozturk walked out of the Louisiana detention center around 5 p.m. local time Friday, her legal team said.
The Trump administration has arrested foreign-born students as part of its campaign to crack down on what it calls antisemitism and extremist ideology on college campuses. The government has singled out students with links to pro-Palestinian protests and activism.
“The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law and common sense to our immigration system,” the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
The government has said it is holding the students in Louisiana because there is room for the students there. Experts say courts in Louisiana have precedent that is less friendly to immigrants.
Ozturk’s lawyers said Friday she needed to be released from a Louisiana detention center immediately because her asthma was worsening. Ozturk told the judge that she was staying in an overcrowded cell with poor ventilation that had triggered about a dozen asthma attacks since March. She said the attacks were getting longer and more intense. “I am constantly exposed,” she said.
She left briefly during the hearing while she experienced another asthma attack. She attended remotely from the detention center, where she said she didn’t have access to good medical care.
Judge Sessions cited the conditions triggering her asthma when he ordered her release.
“She is suffering as a result of her incarceration,” he said.
After the judge issued his order, Ozturk’s lawyer sitting next to her in Louisiana stood up and gave her a hug.
Before Friday’s ruling, a federal appeals court this week upheld Sessions’ order that the Trump administration had to move Ozturk to immigration custody in Vermont by May 14.
Separately on Friday, the appeals court in New York denied the government’s request to combine the federal cases of Ozturk and Mahdawi, the other student recently ordered released. The students aren’t related. A prosecutor said consolidating the cases would speed them up. Both students’ legal teams opposed the request.
Ozturk’s federal case is unfolding in Vermont because the government was holding her there when her lawyers filed a petition against her detention. Immigration authorities detained her in Massachusetts and briefly moved her to New Hampshire and Vermont en route to Louisiana. She has a separate immigration case playing out in Louisiana, where the government is attempting to deport her.
Ozturk said during the hearing Friday that upon her release, she would go back to Massachusetts and teach a summer course on children’s media. She was on track to receive her doctoral degree next year.
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