A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a judge's order to bring a Turkish Tufts University student from a Louisiana immigration detention center back to New England for hearings to determine whether her rights were violated and if she should be released. Denying a government request for a delay, the three-judge panel of the New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Rumeysa Ozturk after hearing arguments Tuesday, per the AP. Ozturk has been in Louisiana for more than six weeks following an op-ed she co-wrote last year that criticized the school's response to Israel's war in Gaza. The court ordered Ozturk to be transferred to ICE custody in Vermont by Wednesday.
Immigration court proceedings for Ozturk, initiated in Louisiana, are being conducted separately, and Ozturk can participate remotely, the court said. Ozturk's lawyers first filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts, though they didn't know where she was at first after she was detained. A Massachusetts judge later transferred the case to Vermont. "The government now argues that this transfer was improper. The government is wrong," the appeals court wrote. It also said Ozturk's interest in participating in person in the Vermont hearings outweighs administrative and logistical costs to the government.
A district court judge in Vermont had ordered that the 30-year-old doctoral student be brought to the state for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained. The Justice Department, which appealed that ruling, said that the immigration court in Louisiana has jurisdiction over Ozturk's case. The appeals court paused the transfer order last week to consider an emergency motion filed by the government. But on Wednesday, the court didn't agree to the request for a longer delay.
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Immigration officials surrounded Ozturk on a street near Boston on March 25 and drove her to New Hampshire and Vermont before sending her to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana. A Homeland Security rep said in March, without evidence, that investigations found Ozturk had engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a US-designated terror group. Ozturk's lawyers say her detention violates her right to free speech and due process. "No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views," Esha Bhandari, one of Ozturk's attorneys, said in a statement. A hearing on her motion to be released on bail was scheduled in Burlington for Friday, followed by another hearing on May 22.
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