A federal judge gave the Trump administration a deadline of May 1 on Thursday to move detained Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk from Louisiana to Vermont. The government is attempting to deport her for allegedly engaging “in activities in support of Hamas.”
U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions denied the government’s request to pause the transfer as they appealed the decision to transfer Öztürk to the state where her habeas corpus petition challenging her detainment was filed.
Öztürk was arrested by Homeland Security officials in Somerville, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, on March 25. A video of the encounter, which saw plainclothes officers arrest her, went viral. She was accused of engaging “in activities in support of Hamas” after she wrote an op-ed that called Tufts to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from companies tied to Israel.
Brett Max Kaufman, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Öztürk, slammed the government’s attempts to pause her transfer.
“For four weeks, the government has been detaining Ms. Öztürk for writing an op-ed,” Kaufman said in a statement. “And now, it is doing everything within its power to avoid having to justify what it has done, including filing a hail-mary appeal hoping to stop the district court from deciding her claims.”
Ozturk’s attorneys opposed the government’s request to pause the judge’s previous order.
“Only one party — Ms. Öztürk — would suffer any harm from a stay, and that harm is irreparable,” Öztürk’s attorneys wrote in court filings. “By contrast, the government suffers no harm at all by holding Ms. Öztürk in detention in Vermont instead of Louisiana and being compelled to justify her continued detention.”
The judge said any delay of Öztürk’s transfer could prolong “the very detention that is at the heart of this case.”
Öztürk’s move to Vermont could constitute an upgrade in her conditions. Detention centers in Louisiana have been accused of human rights abuses and the area is considered more “hostile” to immigration cases.
“They’re being placed in facilities that have pretty horrendous conditions, a lot of difficulties with access to counsel and in what is really a more hostile legal jurisdiction to fight their case for the right to remain in the United States,” Mary Yanik, the director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Tulane Law School in New Orleans, told NBC News.
Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who is also fighting his immigration case, is being held in Louisiana. The Trump administration is attempting to deport him over his connection to a protest at Columbia University in which anti-Israel activists distributed flyers written by Hamas state media.
JAMES HO, THE 5TH CIRCUIT ORIGINALIST TIPPED AS THE HEIR TO CLARENCE THOMAS
A group of congressional lawmakers met with Khalil and Öztürk on Tuesday.
“From our communications with these individuals, they’re frightened, they’re concerned. They want to go home,” Carter told reporters after the visit. “They’re happy to see that members of Congress are here to listen, to take good notes, to go back to Washington to ensure that due process is granted, health care is provided and fairness is the rule of day.”
