A federal judge ordered Homeland Security to immediately release Rumeysa Ozturk, a university student from Turkey whose arrest in March went viral.
U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III said Ms. Ozturk’s detention was legally iffy, adding that she may have been targeted only because she wrote an op-ed in Massachusetts’ Tufts University newspaper.
He said the government has offered no other justification for Ms. Ozturk’s dramatic arrest and the deportation case against her, despite being given several opportunities to do so.
The judge from the District of Vermont also said Ms. Ozturk has developed severe asthma issues while in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana.
“Her continued detention cannot stand,” Judge Sessions said in ruling from the bench on Friday.
Ms. Ozturk is the third high-profile pro-Palestinian student ordered released recently as the federal courts express skepticism over the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students.
Mohammed Hoque, a student at Minnesota State University-Mankato, was released this week, and Mohsen Mahdawi of Columbia University was freed last month.
Judge Sessions said Ms. Ozturk may have been denied due process rights with her quick transfers after her arrest, and he said she does appear to have been singled out by the administration for only co-writing the op-ed where she urged Tufts to become more pro-Palestinian in its dealings.
“Her continued detention chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens,” the judge said.
Judge Sessions ordered Ms. Ozturk set free without any conditions as of now, though he said he’s willing to listen to ICE if it wants to request some “modest” ones in the future.
“She doesn’t pose a risk,” the judge said.
Ms. Ozturk’s case garnered national attention after a video showed her arrest on the street by ICE officers, some wearing masks, as they approached her and hustled her into a waiting SUV.
The government has said little about the reason she was targeted other than to point to the op-ed.
Judge Sessions said he gave officials plenty of chances to make arguments but they didn’t.
At Friday’s hearing, the Justice Department’s lawyer only raised issues about whether the court had jurisdiction.
The government is on a losing streak in the courts over its student deportation efforts.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also Friday, rejected the Trump team’s request to block the release of Mr. Mahdawi.
“Individual liberty substantially outweighs the government’s weak assertions of administrative and legal costs,” the three-judge panel ruled.
The Trump administration also had to cancel a broad program to revoke registrations of thousands of foreign students after racking up a spectacular string of court losses.
Judge Sessions had already ordered that Ms. Ozturk be brought from Louisiana back to Vermont. That’s because she was briefly held in the Green Mountain State while in transit from Massachusetts to Louisiana after her arrest.
Friday’s order means she must be set free posthaste in Louisiana. He ordered the government’s lawyer to alert him when that happens.
