Attorneys for Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student detained last month, are asking a Vermont judge to order her to be transferred to Vermont from Louisiana by Friday or released on bail.
The request, filed in U.S. District Court in Vermont, comes after a judge in Öztürk’s separate immigration case denied her release on bond on Wednesday.
Öztürk is a party in two ongoing cases. One is in immigration court in Louisiana, where she is currently held. The other, her case alleging her wrongful detention, is in federal court in Vermont.
The Turkish graduate student was detained by masked and plainclothes officers on a street near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, on the evening of March 25. She was whisked north to Vermont via New Hampshire that night before being flown out of Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport early the following morning.
Öztürk’s attorneys have argued that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrongly targeted her for exercising her rights to free speech. The government appears to have revoked Öztürk’s visa because she co-wrote an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized university leaders for their response to demands that the school divest from companies with ties to Israel, her attorneys have said.
In Burlington earlier this week, Judge William Sessions heard arguments from both the federal government and lawyers for Öztürk, who were seeking her release and transfer back to Vermont in the wrongful detention case.
Acting U.S. Attorney for Vermont Michael Drescher, who is defending ICE and other federal agencies against Öztürk’s challenge, said on Monday that the government did not dispute that the student could bring a case against it. But he argued that the challenge had to be confined to the federal immigration system, with its own distinct courts and judges.
During the hearing, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the federal courthouse in Burlington in support of Öztürk. At that time, Sessions said he would take both sides’ arguments “under advisement.”
The latest filing from Öztürk’s attorneys again asks Sessions to release their client on bail or order her transfer to Vermont, and also asks the judge to hold a hearing on their client’s release if necessary by April 23.
“The importance of the remedies Ms. Öztürk seeks from this Court is only underscored by developments in immigration court, where Ms. Öztürk’s request for bond was summarily denied,” they wrote. “The immigration judge denied bond based on her untenable conclusion that Ms. Öztürk was both a flight risk and a danger to the community.”
Attorneys for Öztürk wrote that the Department of Homeland Security presented only a one-paragraph memo revoking their client’s visa as evidence in opposition to her release on bond.
“The court yesterday relied on a previously submitted State Department memo that points to nothing that Ms. Öztürk said or did — other than her 2024 school newspaper op-ed — to falsely claim she is a danger to her community,” Mahsa Khanbabai, one of Öztürk’s lawyers, said in a statement.
