Judge orders detained Tufts student Rumeysa Öztürk to be transferred back to Vermont

A federal judge on Friday ordered that the Tufts University student who wrote an essay about Israel and the war in Gaza and is now fighting deportation must be transferred back to Vermont.

Judge William K. Sessions III stayed his order for four days to give the government a chance to appeal.

Rumeysa Öztürk, a 30-year-old Turkish national in the United States on a visa, is being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana.

In Friday’s ruling, the judge refused efforts by the government to dismiss her habeas petition.

He found that Öztürk “has raised significant constitutional concerns with her arrest and detention.”

The Tufts doctoral student was arrested March 25 in Somerville, Massachusetts, and the Department of Homeland Security has accused her of engaging “in activities in support of Hamas.”

She co-wrote an opinion essay in 2024 for the student newspaper that called on Tufts to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” which the undergraduate student government had demanded in a resolution.

The essay criticized university leadership for its response to the student government’s resolutions that it “disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.”

“A university op-ed advocating for human rights and freedom for the Palestinian people should not lead to imprisonment,” one of her attorneys, Mahsa Khanbabai, said Friday. “Our immigration laws should not be manipulated to rip people away from their homes and their loved ones.”

Öztürk’s attorneys called Friday’s ruling a victory, and said that the federal government was trying to manipulate where her case would be heard so that it could try for its preferred outcome.

Friday’s ruling allows Öztürk to remain in ICE custody in Vermont while her habeas petition, which challenges her detainment, proceeds in federal court, as well as her removal case in immigration court in Louisiana.

The Department of Justice declined to comment Friday.

Öztürk is one of a number of international students in the U.S. on visas who the Trump administration is trying to deport for their actions protesting the conduct of Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, which it launched after the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Tufts University has defended Öztürk and has petitioned that she be released from custody. The university said the opinion essay did not violate its policies and was in accordance with its position on free speech.

“The University has no further information suggesting that she has acted in a manner that would constitute a violation of the University’s understanding of the Immigration and Naturalization Act,” the university leadership said in a declaration earlier this month.