Updated at 7 p.m.
A panel of federal judges in New York heard arguments Tuesday in the cases of two foreign-born students — Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi — who appear to have been targeted by President Donald Trump’s administration for speaking out about the war in Gaza and who, at different points, were detained in Vermont as a result.
So far, federal judges in Vermont have bucked the Trump administration’s plans over exactly where, and for how long, immigration authorities could keep both students in custody. The government has, in recent days, appealed those two judges’ rulings.
On Tuesday morning, judges from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — whose jurisdiction includes Vermont — spent more than an hour questioning lawyers for the students, as well as U.S. Department of Justice attorney Drew Ensign, in a New York City courtroom, though the judges did not immediately issue a ruling in either case.
Instead, the judges said they would take both sides’ arguments “under advisement.”
Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, was arrested by federal agents in Massachusetts in March before being whisked to St. Albans and then Louisiana, where she has been held since in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Last month, a federal judge in Vermont ordered that the government transfer Öztürk back to Vermont while her case proceeds in federal court — something the student’s attorneys have requested. That order is now on pause while the Trump administration appeals it.
Meanwhile, Mahdawi — a Palestinian Columbia University student who is finishing an undergraduate degree — was arrested in Colchester in April by federal agents. He was detained at a state-run prison in St. Albans Town for weeks before a different Vermont federal judge ordered his release. The Trump administration is asking the federal appeals court to, among other actions, order Mahdawi be placed back into custody.
In court filings and on Tuesday, Ensign, the government prosecutor, said both students’ cases should be delegated entirely to the federal immigration court system. Following their arrests, both Öztürk and Mahdawi have faced the prospect of being deported.
The students’ attorneys maintain that both are being unlawfully targeted for practicing free speech, and that by prosecuting the students, the government is creating a chilling effect on others who’d want to speak out about the conflict in the Middle East, too.
The federal government has singled out an op-ed Öztürk co-wrote in 2024 for Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized the university’s response to the Israel-Hamas war. Öztürk had a visa to study in the U.S. that has since been revoked. Meanwhile, court records show federal officials have called Mahdawi — who is a lawful U.S. resident and was in the process of applying for U.S. citizenship — a threat to national security over his prominent involvement in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last year.
Tuesday’s proceedings first focused on Öztürk, with Ensign telling the judges it would be an undue burden on ICE to detain the student in Vermont because the government would have to set up new equipment in order for her to appear remotely for her ongoing immigration court proceedings, which are taking place in Louisiana.
There are no detention facilities in Vermont where ICE can provide the remote access those proceedings require, Ensign said, citing a memo filed with the court that was written by John Charpentier, an ICE field office director based in Massachusetts.
Charpentier wrote that if Öztürk is, as the judge in Vermont ordered, brought back to Vermont, ICE “will have to detain her” at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, where women detainees are typically held for immigration-related matters in the state.
“We identified some operational harms that would come from that,” Ensign said, adding that the process “would also create irrecoverable costs” on the government’s dime.
At least one of the appeals judges appeared skeptical of that argument Tuesday, though, asking, “what more is there than just setting up a Zoom computer?”
Esha Bhandari, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union representing Öztürk, also questioned Ensign’s point before the judges, calling the cost of facilitating remote appearances “the kind of cost” that “litigants and the government bear every day.”
Bhandari also argued that the student’s health has deteriorated while in ICE custody — pointing to a declaration Öztürk filed with the court late last week which states that the student has suffered increasingly lengthy and frequent asthma attacks and suggests the episodes are exacerbated by poor ventilation, overcrowding and mice droppings.
“Over and above the constitutional harms of her being unjustly detained are, you know, the serious impacts on her health,” said Brian Hauss, another ACLU attorney who is part of Öztürk’s legal team, in an interview Tuesday following the court proceedings.
Attorneys representing Mahdawi, meanwhile, contended on Tuesday that the federal government did not need to detain him while his immigration court hearings continue, saying many other people attend such hearings without being put into custody. They noted Mahdawi had already attended one such hearing since he’d been released.
Ensign argued, though, that the Vermont federal judge did not have authority to release the student from custody in the first place. Mahdawi’s detention is inseparable from his ongoing immigration case, Ensign contended, and the judge’s ruling has had “injurious effects” on the Trump administration’s ability to carry out federal immigration laws.
The appeals court judges pushed back on that point, too, with one questioning whether Ensign was, really, saying that the administration would consider any ruling against it to be an “irreparable injury” to its authority. They also pressed Ensign on whether or not the Trump administration believed that both students’ speech was lawful speech.
“We have not taken a position on that,” Ensign told the panel of three judges, saying concerns over where the students’ cases should be heard were more important.
“Help my thinking along,” Judge Barrington D. Parker then said. “Take a position.”
“Your honor, I don’t have authority to take a position on that right now,” Ensign replied.
