On Friday, a judge ordered the government to immediately release Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk on bail from a federal immigration detention center. The judge said Ozturk’s challenge of her arrest raised serious claims of due process and First Amendment violations, and that her continued detention “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens.”
U.S. District Judge for the District of Vermont William K. Sessions III said the government’s failure to produce any evidence against Ozturk besides an op-ed she helped write for the Tufts student newspaper suggested that she was detained for protected First Amendment speech. Citing the extraordinary circumstances of her case, the chilling effects of her continued detention, and Ozturk’s medical testimony, Sessions found that Ozturk’s detention could not stand and ordered her released on her own recognizance without restriction on travel.
The ruling is a loss for the Trump administration’s campaign to deport student visa holders for speaking in favor of Palestine and participating in pro-Palestine protests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed sweeping powers to revoke the visas of foreigners that the federal government deems harmful to its foreign policy interests and have them arrested without a warrant or criminal charges.
“Rumeysa can now return to her beloved Tufts community, resume her studies, and begin teaching again. We could not be more delighted,” Noor Zafar, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a press release. “Today’s ruling underscores a vital First Amendment principle: No one should be imprisoned by the government for expressing their beliefs.”
Immigration agents snatched Ozturk off the street near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, on March 25. She was then whisked away to Vermont, followed by an immigration detention center in Louisiana before she was allowed to speak with a lawyer.
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.
At her court hearing on Friday, Ozturk testified via Zoom from the Louisiana detention facility where she has been held for more than six weeks. She said she suffers frequent and severe asthma attacks. She also testified that a nurse ordered her to take her hijab off when she was trying to get help for one of those attacks.
“The nurse said ‘take the thing off my head,'” Ozturk said.
The Trump administration’s legal arguments in Ozturk’s and similar cases have alarmed civil rights groups and federal judges. In another student visa case, a federal judge compared the tactics to the Red Scare and Palmer raids. Free speech groups have also condemned Ozturk’s arrest.
“It is unthinkable that a person in a free society could be snatched from the street, imprisoned, and threatened with deportation for expressing an opinion the government dislikes,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) wrote in an amicus brief filed last month in support of Ozturk.
Ozturk still faces deportation, but Sessions’ ruling is welcome pushback against the Trump administration’s thuggish campaign to silence disfavored speech.
