US federal judge orders detained Türkiye student be returned to Vermont to await trial News
Joe Gratz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
US federal judge orders detained Türkiye student be returned to Vermont to await trial

A US federal judge on Friday ordered Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk to be returned to Vermont, where she will remain in custody, pending a bail hearing. Ozturk, a PhD student at Tufts University, was detained by Department of Homeland (DHS) agents near the university’s Massachusetts campus last month after her F-1 student visa was revoked.

Ozturk was briefly held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Vermont before she was transferred to an ICE facility in Louisiana, where she has remained since March 26. ICE officials contend that Ozturk was moved as part of a standard procedure due to a lack of space at New England-area detention facilities. However, court documents submitted by Ozturk’s legal team note that local facilities had ample space, and this move conflicts with standard booking and detention procedures. A federal judge temporarily blocked Ozturk’s deportation on March 30.

Friday’s court order comes in response to a petition for habeas corpus filed in the Massachusetts federal district court. A habeas corpus petition filed under 28 U.S.C. §  2241 is used to challenge conditions of detention. This raises a legal question, as Ozturk was being held in Vermont, but her petition was filed in Massachusetts. Under the 2004 Supreme Court decision in Rumsfeld v. Padilla, district courts can only grant habeas relief within their respective jurisdictions. 

Vermont federal district court judge William Sessions III explained in his ruling on Friday that the habeas petition was properly transferred to his jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1631, which allows federal lawsuits to be transferred to a different federal court where the action “could have been brought at the time it was filed.” Judge Sessions writes that Ozturk’s return to Vermont will support a fair and speedy resolution of the proceedings because it allows her to more readily work with attorneys and witnesses who are based in New England. The Massachusetts ACLU celebrated Friday’s decision in a statement: “With this ruling, a federal court has rightfully reaffirmed that [Ozturk’s] case belongs in Vermont — significantly closer to her friends, community, and counsel.”

This is one of several recent high-profile cases in which university students have been detained or deported. In a joint memo, DHS and ICE contend that Ozturk’s visa was revoked due to associations that “undermine US foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization.” Massachusetts state and local officials released a joint statement with Tufts University arguing that Ozturk was detained for voicing “opinions that are constitutionally protected free speech for citizens and immigrants alike.” Both sides point to an op-ed that Ozturk co-authored in the Tufts school paper last year as the origin of her detainment. 

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