Updated at 4:25 p.m.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to comply with a lower court’s ruling in Vermont last month to transfer Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student, to federal immigration custody in the state.
Öztürk has been detained in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana since shortly after she was arrested by armed and masked federal agents in March. Now, though, the government must bring her to a facility in Vermont no later than May 14, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
The ruling did not specify where, exactly, Öztürk would be held. But recent court filings indicate that ICE would likely imprison her at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, a women’s prison operated by the state, while her legal proceedings continue.
Wednesday’s decision came a day after the three-member appeals panel heard arguments from Öztürk’s legal team, and a top prosecutor for the Trump administration, on the case in a New York City courtroom.
Öztürk is a third-year doctoral candidate at Tufts University. Following her arrest near Tufts’ campus in Massachusetts earlier this year, ICE agents whisked her north and held her overnight at an agency field office in St. Albans. Early the following morning, she was flown to Louisiana out of Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport.
Öztürk’s lawyers have challenged her detention — which appears to have stemmed from an op-ed she co-wrote in Tufts’ student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to the war in Gaza — and are pushing for her release from custody. They’ve argued that she was unlawfully targeted for exercising her right to free speech.
A federal judge in Vermont had, last month, ordered the government to transfer Öztürk to a detention facility in Vermont by the start of May. But the appeals court then hit pause on that process while the Trump administration contested it. The administration has revoked Öztürk’s visa to study in the U.S. and has taken steps to deport her.
Drew Ensign, a U.S. Department of Justice attorney, argued Tuesday that the Vermont judge’s ruling infringed on the administration’s authority to carry out federal immigration laws, and that transferring Öztürk would put an operational burden on ICE officials.
In Wednesday’s opinion, the judges rejected those arguments, saying they saw a distinction between the proceedings in Vermont against the circumstances of Öztürk’s arrest and continued detention, and her immigration case, in which she faces the possibility of being deported.
“Faced with such a conflict between the government’s unspecific financial and administrative concerns on the one hand, and the risk of substantial constitutional harm to Öztürk on the other, we have little difficulty concluding ‘that the balance of hardships tips decidedly’ in her favor,” the appeals judges wrote in Wednesday’s opinion.
The judges said the government had, broadly, been “less than convincing” that Öztürk had to remain, physically, in Louisiana for her proceedings to continue. The student has a hearing in Vermont on her attorneys’ motion to release her on bail on Friday.
Öztürk’s attorneys have also argued that her health has deteriorated while in ICE custody in Louisiana. They’ve pointed to a declaration she filed with the court last week which states that she has suffered increasingly lengthy and frequent asthma attacks that, she alleges, have been exacerbated by conditions at the detention facility.
Esha Bhandari, a lawyer for Öztürk with the American Civil Liberties Union, celebrated the appeals judges’ ruling in a press release Wednesday.
“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,” Bhandari said. “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.”
In an emailed statement Wednesday afternoon, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — which includes ICE and other agencies tasked with enforcing immigration laws — suggested that the Trump administration would not back down from its positions in Öztürk’s proceedings.
“Being granted a visa to live and study in the United States is a privilege not a right,” McLaughlin said. “Today’s ruling does not prevent the continued detention of Ms. Ozturk, and we will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country.”
