A federal judge inVermonton Friday morning is set to consider the release on bail of a Tufts University student arrested in March for her political speech and now held in Louisiana in what she and her lawyers argue is a breach of her constitutional rights.
The judgehad orderedRümeysa Öztürk’s return to Vermont, where she was briefly held afterbeing grabbedon the street by masked immigration agents near Boston, for hearings. But the judge decided not to wait for her physical transportation and she was due to appear remotely at the hearing on Friday.
On 25 March, Öztürk, 30, a Turkish national and PhD student studying child development, was bundled into an unmarked car by agents to be taken away without due process and is battling a deportation order issued by theTrump administrationafter she co-authored an opinion article in a student newspaper that was critical of Israel.
The administration is attempting to deport Öztürk under ararely usedimmigration statute giving the secretary of state the authority to remove immigrants deemed harmful to US foreign policy. Her lawyers say it is a flagrant violation of her constitutional right to free speech.
According to court filings, Öztürk has suffered multiple asthma attacks in detention that she has struggled to get treated for, and has had her hijab forcibly removed.
“Since my arrest, in the span of five weeks, I have had at least eight asthma attacks where I have felt unable to control my coughing,” she said in adeclarationfiled in court earlier this month. “Prior to my arrest, in the span of two to three years, I had approximately nine such asthma attacks in which I felt unable to control my coughing.”
The declaration elaborates on unsanitary conditions in the detention center and difficulties receiving care, echoing otheraccountsfrom detainees and immigration advocates who have reported rotten food and the denial of medical care in the facility in Basile, Louisiana.
Öztürk’s legal team – which includes the ACLU and Clear (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility) – filed a challenge to her detention, in federal court inVermont.
Öztürk is one ofseveral international studentsdetained by the Trump administration over their pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus. Another student,Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder set to graduate from New York’s Columbia University this year, wasrecently releasedon bail by another federal judge in Vermont.
On Thursday, Mahdawihelped launcha $1m fundraising campaign to strengthen the legal safety net for immigrants in Vermont. He also accused Columbia of eroding democracy with its handling of campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mahdawi, 34, said in an interview that instead of being a “beacon of hope”, the university was inciting violence against students.“Columbia University is participating in the destruction of the democratic system. They are supporting the initiatives and the agenda of the Trump administration, and they are punishing and torturing their students,” he said.
The New York police department was called in on Wednesdayand arresteddozens of pro-Palestinian activists who occupied part of the main library building on Columbia’s campus, ending an hours-long standoff, just over a year after student anti-war protestsswept the Ivy League schooland kicked off a wave of encampments at schools across the country.
And in the case of Columbia graduate studentMahmoud Khalil, 30, who was taken away from his home in New York and also sent to detention without due process, the justice department faces deadlines on Friday to provide a complete list of precedent cases in its attempt to justify his arrest and efforts to deport the green card holder.
Michael Farbiarz, a federal judge in New Jersey, instructed the Trump administration on Wednesday to detail the legal precedent for its plan to deport Khalil, a Palestinian activist whose presence in the US the government insists could harm foreign policy interests.
Farbiarz ordered the administration for every case in which the government, as in Öztürk’s case,is usingobscure immigration law to makeextraordinary claimsthat it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting