Court Orders Release of Tufts Foreign Student Detained For Her Speech
Yesterday, federal District Judge William K. Sessions, III, of the District of Vermont ordered the immediate release of Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, whom ICE had detained and slated for deportation based on her anti-Israel speech. There does not appear to be a written decision in the case. But here is a summary of the background of the case, and what the judge said orally:
Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk was released from a Louisiana detention center Friday, six weeks after masked federal agents took her into custody amid the Trump administration’s effort to deport noncitizens who have protested against the war in Gaza.
Hours after US District Judge William K. Sessions III ordered her immediate release, a smiling Öztürk was surrounded by a group of supporters who chanted “Rümeysa! Rümeysa!” as she walked out of the detention center Friday evening….
The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” However, the only evidence it could provide, even after prodding from Sessions, was an op-ed Ozturk helped write that called on Tufts to divest from Israel.
Ozturk filed a habeas corpus petition challenging her arrest and detention….
Her arrest came a year after Öztürk co-authored a campus newspaper op-ed that was critical of Tufts University’s response to the war in Gaza, and her attorneys have said that she was targeted by the administration in an attempt to chill pro-Palestinian speech in violation of her constitutional rights. The 30-year-old, originally from Turkey and on a valid F-1 student visa, was shuttled through multiple states after her arrest and suffered through a series of asthma attacks without adequate medical care, according to her attorneys.
Öztürk, who has not been charged with any crime, was accused by the Trump administration of participating in activities in support of Hamas. Neither the administration nor attorneys for the Department of Justice presented any evidence of her alleged activities in court.
Sessions presided over the more than three-hour hearing, where four witnesses – including Öztürk – testified about her community engagement work and her asthma. Sessions said Öztürk had raised “substantial claims” of both due process and First Amendment violations.
“Continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens. Any one of them may now avoid exercising their First Amendment rights for fe
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