A doctoral student from the University of Tufts who was arrested by masked federal agents in March must be returned to Vermont from a detention center in Louisiana, a federal court of appeals said on Wednesday.
The decision in the case of Rumeysa Ozurk affirmed a federal court in Vermont, which the Trump administration had appealed. That ruling said that Mrs. Ozturb, who is in custody of immigration and the application of customs, must be transferred back to Vermont, where her lawyer had presented a challenge to her arrest.
The court gave the administration a week to move Mrs. Ozturb, a Turkish citizen with a student visa.
The Trump administration has said that it wanted to deport international students who were involved in pro-palestinian activism, saying that deportations are part of an effort to take energetic measures against anti-Semitism. Student defenders such as Mrs. Ozturb have denied that their activism is anti -Semitic and said that arrests violate the first amendment.
“No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views,” said Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the American Union of Civil Liberties, which represents Mrs. Ozturb, in a statement on Wednesday.
Student’s lawyers have said that when moving the EM. Ozturb to Louisiana, the government was “purchases in the forum” for a more favorable place for the case.
Government officials have indicated a pro-palestinian opinion essay that Mrs. Ozturb wrote for the student newspaper, and accused her of having associations that “can under the foreign policy of the United States,” according to judicial documents.
“We are grateful that the court rejected the government’s attempt to keep it isolated from its community and its legal advisor while pursuing its case for liberation,” Bhandari said.
In a statement on Wednesday after the Court’s decision, the Trump administration said that “a visa is a privilege, not a right.”
“Today’s failure does not prevent the continuous arrest of Mrs. Ozturb,” said Tricia McLahughlin, spokesman for national security, “and we will continue to fight for arrest, detention and elimination of foreigners who do not have no.
On March 25, Mrs. Ozturb was on a sidewalk on Somerville, Massachusetts, talking to her mother on the phone and walking to meet friends, when agents armed with simple clothes surrounded her and left her in an unmarked car. They first drove New Hampshire, then Vermont, and they transferred it to Louisiana.
In its ruling on Wednesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that the Government did not show that its successful appeal, or show sufficient injuries to justify the maintenance of Mrs. Ozturb in Louisiana. The ruling said that the interest of Mrs. Ozturb in participating in her scheduled court proceeded in Vermont “exceeds the alleged administrative and logistics costs of the government” to move it.
