US appeals court to consider Turkish student's transfer to Vermont

​​​​​​​ISTANBUL

A US court issued an administrative stay as it considers a government's request for an emergency stay in the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student detained by immigration authorities, a rights group said Tuesday.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the government Monday to respond to Ozturk's legal team opposition to that request by Thursday, and scheduled arguments for May 6, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported.

A federal judge in the state of Massachusetts previously ruled that Ozturk's case should proceed in the state of Vermont, where she was initially held overnight, and ordered her transfer there for hearings. The Vermont District Court affirmed that decision, ordering the government to transfer her to a Vermont facility by May 1, a decision the government subsequently appealed.

"Rumeysa Ozturk never should have been arrested and detained, period," Ozturk's legal team said in a statement. "We are ready to argue her case before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and we won't stop fighting until she is free."

Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested March 25 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Massachusetts for co-authoring an op-ed last year about the Palestine-Israel conflict in the school’s student newspaper.

Following her arrest, authorities transported her through multiple states before flying her to the state of Louisiana.