US judge weighs release of Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, possible hearing in May

WASHINGTON

A US federal judge in Vermont on Monday said he is weighing whether to release Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk and whether to hold a hearing in May as she challenges her detention by immigration authorities.

Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar and PhD student in child and human development at Tufts University, was detained on March 25 by masked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents outside her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Her arrest came shortly after she was targeted online by the pro-Israel website Canary Mission, which aimed at her for co-authoring an op-ed in the campus newspaper criticizing Tufts University’s response to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, which killed nearly 51,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Her lawyers argue that the arrest and continued detention violate her constitutional rights, including her First Amendment right to free speech and Fifth Amendment protections.

They are asking the court to either release her on bail or order her transfer from a detention facility in Basile, Louisiana, to Vermont, where her legal team filed an emergency habeas petition the night of her arrest.

“These were unusual steps that were designed to punish Ms. Ozturk for her protected speech — chill her speech and send a very chilling message to everyone who was watching,” said Jessie Rossman, one of Ozturk’s attorneys, during the hearing. “If you engage in speech that the administration disagrees with, you will be punished.”

Ozturk’s legal team is seeking her release on bail or a court order that would bring her from Louisiana to Vermont, where she was briefly held before being flown south and where her legal team filed an emergency petition on the night of her arrest.

During Monday's hearing, Judge Sessions and government attorneys debated whether the court has jurisdiction to consider Ozturk's detention while removal proceedings are ongoing, as well as whether her legal petition correctly identified the appropriate immigration officials.

The judge said he was considering holding an evidentiary hearing in May to examine the circumstances of Ozturk’s arrest and continued detention.

Ozturk’s lawyers cited a Washington Post investigation published on Sunday that revealed that the State Department had found no evidence connecting Ozturk to antisemitic activities or any support for terrorism. Despite this, she was arrested days later, without notice, and has now been detained for nearly a month.

“She is desperate to return to Tufts to continue her education,” Rossman said, adding that the court had received “nearly two dozen sworn declarations” affirming her commitment to her studies and rebutting any claim that she poses a flight risk or danger to the community.

“On the other side of the aisle,” Ozturk’s lawyer continued, “(The government) was certainly on notice that the petitioner has been requesting bail now for over two weeks, and there's been no such submission from the government, and we have no reason to believe that they would be able to do so.”

Ozturk, a Turkish national who is in the final year of her PhD, has not been charged with any crime.

Asked about her case last month, Republican Senator Marco Rubio defended the revocation of her student visa, saying: "We give you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”

The Department of Homeland Security has claimed that Ozturk engaged in activities supporting Hamas — a group designated as a terrorist organization by the US — but the administration has yet to present any evidence to substantiate that claim.