Hundreds of people gathered in Somerville, Mass., on March 26, to demand the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student at Tufts University, who was arrested by federal agents the day before.
Michael Casey/AP
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Michael Casey/AP
A federal judge in Vermont has ordered that Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student and Turkish national, be immediately released from federal custody. Judge William K. Sessions’ ruling Friday comes more than six weeks after masked immigration agents picked her up on a suburban Boston street as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian student activists.
In his ruling, Judge Sessions of the U.S. District Court for Vermont, said that her arrest and detention appeared likely to have been carried out solely in retaliation for an op-ed she wrote in a campus newspaper criticizing her school leaders’ response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“I suggested to the government that they produce any additional information which would suggest that she posed a substantial risk,” Sessions said. “And that was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence introduced by the government other than the op-ed. That literally is the case. There is no evidence here.”
Sessions added: “The court finds that Ms. Öztürk has raised a substantial claim of a constitutional violation.”
He ordered her immediate release, rejecting, for now, the government’s request that immigration officials be allowed to place conditions on her freedom. Sessions called Öztürk’s experience “a traumatic incident” and said “her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”
Ozturk’s release is the latest legal setback for the Trump administration as it seeks to carry out the president’s promise to deport noncitizens who’ve engaged in what the White House calls antisemitic campus activism. Last week, another federal judge ordered the government to release Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student protest leader at Columbia University who it is also trying to deport, despite his status as a lawful permanent resident.
Like Mahdawi, Öztürk still faces possible deportation. But Friday’s ruling means she won’t be locked up while she fights the government’s attempt to revoke her legal status.
“We are relieved and ecstatic that she has been ordered released,” her attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it is 45 days too late. She has been imprisoned all these days for simply writing an op-ed that called for human rights and dignity for the people in Palestine. When did speaking up against oppression become a crime? When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?”
In a statement Tufts University said the school was pleased with the decision: “We look forward to welcoming her back to campus to resume her doctoral studies.”
Öztürk, sitting beside Khanbabai, appeared at the hearing via zoom from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center. She testified about how her time there, living in an overcrowded mouse-infested cell with 23 other women, has worsened her chronic asthma problem. At one point during the hearing, she said she was suffering an asthma attack and temporarily left the room.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security did not directly address the judge’s order.
“Visas provided to foreign students to live and study in the United States are a privilege not a right,” the statement said, adding that the Trump administration “we will continue to fight for the arrest, detention and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country.”
Öztürk’s fight to be released from detention has become one of the highest profile cases over whether the government can arrest and deport noncitizens that the government believes threaten U.S. foreign policy interests.
After her arrest, the Trump administration accused Öztürk of engaging in “activities in support of Hamas,” and, according to court papers, the Department of Homeland Security determined that she had been involved in associations that “may undermine U.S foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
Advocates, however, say Öztürk and others detained by the administration are being targeted for exercising their free speech. Her lawyers filed a lawsuit challenging her arrest and detention as unconstitutional retaliation for her activism, saying they were “designed to punish her speech and chill the speech of others.”
To date, the government has produced no evidence supporting its accusations against Öztürk other than a 2024 op-ed she co-wrote for the Tufts campus newspaper. In it, she criticized school administrators for not doing more to condemn Israel’s war in Gaza, which she called a “plausible genocide.”
She was arrested on March 25 by plainclothes ICE agents who surrounded her as she walked to dinner with friends. Four days earlier, the State Department had quietly canceled her student visa, according to court filings. Agents quickly drove her from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and Vermont, before flying her the next day to Louisiana.
Judge Sessions has scheduled arguments later this month in his Burlington, Vermont courtroom to consider the constitutional issues in the case.
