Updated at 6:01 p.m.
A federal judge has reaffirmed his order that the government transfer a detained Tufts University international student back to Vermont from Louisiana after the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont appealed the decision earlier this week.
U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III rejected a request from the federal government to halt his transfer order. An attorney for the administration of President Donald Trump is expected to request emergency action from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to try to block the order.
“The government’s motion largely recycles the same arguments that the Court has previously considered and rejected,” Sessions wrote in a Thursday order. “The government is now obligated to ensure that Ms. Ozturk is transferred to ICE custody within the District of Vermont no later than May 1.”
Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish PhD student who was living legally in the United States on a student visa, was taken into custody by masked immigration officers in plainclothes late last month in Massachusetts after the Trump administration revoked her visa. She eventually was held overnight in Vermont at a St. Albans immigration facility before being taken aboard a flight at the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport and arriving at a Louisiana detention facility the next morning.
Attorneys for Öztürk filed a lawsuit alleging her detention was unlawful. In the suit, they argue she was wrongly targeted in violation of her free speech rights. Öztürk had co-authored an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper last year that called on the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
Sessions, the Vermont federal judge, last week ordered the federal government to transfer Öztürk from Louisiana to Vermont.
“Ms. Ozturk has presented viable and serious habeas claims which warrant urgent review on the merits,” he wrote. A bail hearing is scheduled for May 9.
Michael Drescher, acting U.S. attorney for the district of Vermont, who is representing ICE and other federal agencies and officials in the case, appealed the decision earlier this week. He has signalled that the administration will seek “emergency relief” from the appeals court in an effort to halt Öztürk’s transfer.
In his Thursday order, Sessions said the government had not shown any “concrete injury” it would suffer if Öztürk was returned to Vermont. In contrast, he cited the detained student’s experiences in the Louisiana detention center.
“She reports that she is enduring overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, a worsening medical condition, insufficient medical care, and difficulties practicing her religion,” Sessions wrote. “The Court finds that the balance of harms of a stay of transfer would fall most heavily on Ms. Ozturk and would not be in the public interest.”
