Judge Orders ICE to Transfer Tufts Student to Vermont

Tufts Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was detained by ICE agents in March, will be transferred to a different detention center under the order of a federal appeals court, The Boston Globe reported.

Öztürk will be moved from Louisiana to Vermont, where she has been since she was first arrested.

“The District of Vermont is likely the proper venue to adjudicate Öztürk’s habeas petition because, at the time she filed, she was physically in Vermont and her immediate custodian was unknown,” the court ruled.

Öztürk is a Turkish national in the U.S. on a student visa. Shortly after being detained, her attorney Mahsa Khanbabai told the Globe she wasn’t aware of any charges against her client. Öztürk did co-write an op-ed in the student newspaper criticizing her university’s response to pro-Palestinian protests.

Khanbabai is working alongside three lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, who hailed the ruling.

“No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views. Every day that Rümeysa Öztürk remains in detention is a day too long,” said Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, in a statement. “We’re grateful the court refused the government’s attempt to keep her isolated from her community and her legal counsel as she pursues her case for release.”

The government has fought to keep Öztürk’s case, along with other lawsuits challenging the deportation of current and former students, in Louisiana or Texas. However, a federal judge ruled this week that former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil’s challenge should stay in the District of New Jersey. Another judge also ordered that Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher, can fight his detention in Virginia, where he was first arrested. Suri was then transferred to Texas, but a judge is expected to order immigration officials to move him back to Virginia, The Washington Post reported.