Turkish Tufts University student detained by ICE can be sent to Vermont, appeals court rules

A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a judge’s order to bring a Turkish Tufts University student from a Louisiana immigration detention center back to New England for hearings to determine whether her rights were violated.

A judicial panel of the New York-based U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Rumeysa Ozturk after lawyers representing her and the U.S. Justice Department presented arguments at a hearing Tuesday. Ozturk has been detained in Louisiana for six weeks following an op-ed she co-wrote last year that criticized the school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.

The court ordered Ozturk to be transferred to ICE custody in Vermont no later than May 14.

A district court judge in Vermont had earlier ordered that the 30-year-old doctoral student be brought to the state for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained. Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.

The Justice Department, which appealed that ruling, said that an immigration court in Louisiana has jurisdiction over her case.

Immigration officials surrounded Ozturk 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.

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.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in March, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.