A Tufts University doctoral student who was arrested by masked federal agents in March must be returned to Vermont from a detention facility in Louisiana, a federal appellate court said on Wednesday.
The decision in the case of Rumeysa Ozturk affirmed the ruling of a federal court in Vermont, which the Trump administration had appealed. That ruling said that Ms. Ozturk, who is in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, must be moved back to Vermont, where her lawyer had filed a challenge to her detainment.
The court gave the administration one week to move Ms. Ozturk, a Turkish citizen with a student visa.
The Trump administration has said it wanted to deport international students who were involved in pro-Palestinian activism, saying the deportations are part of an effort to crack down on antisemitism. Advocates for students like Ms. Ozturk have denied that their activism is antisemitic and have said the detentions violate the First Amendment.
“No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views,” said Esha Bhandari, a deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Ms. Ozturk, in a statement on Wednesday.
Lawyers for the student have said that by moving Ms. Ozturk to Louisiana, the government was “forum shopping” for a more favorable venue for the case.
Government officials have pointed to a pro-Palestinian opinion essay that Ms. Ozturk wrote for the student newspaper, and have accused her of having associations that “may undermine U.S. foreign policy,” according to court documents.
“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,” Ms. Bhandari said.
In a statement on Wednesday after the court ruling, the Trump administration said that “a visa is a privilege, not a right.”
“Today’s ruling does not prevent the continued detention of Ms. Ozturk,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, “and we will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country.”
On March 25, Ms. Ozturk was on a sidewalk in Somerville, Mass., speaking to her mother on the phone and walking to meet friends, when armed agents in plain clothes surrounded her and took her away in an unmarked car. They drove her first to New Hampshire, then to Vermont, and eventually transferred her to Louisiana.
In its ruling on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that the government had failed to show that its appeal would succeed, or to show sufficient injury to justify keeping Ms. Ozturk in Louisiana. The ruling said that Ms. Ozturk’s interest in participating in her scheduled court proceeding in Vermont “outweighs the government’s purported administrative and logistical costs” to move her.
Vimal Patel writes about higher education with a focus on speech and campus culture.
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