Judge weighs Tufts student's bid for release during challenge to detention
Source: CBS News
Updated on: April 14, 2025 / 1:35 PM EDT
Washington — A federal judge in Vermont considered Monday whether to release a Tufts University Ph.D. student as she challenges her detention as a violation of her free speech rights. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at the Massachusetts university, was detained by immigration authorities last month outside of her apartment because her student visa had been revoked.
The Trump administration has said hundreds of students studying at American universities have had their visas taken away or were stopped from reentering the United States after they were accused of publicly expressing support for Palestinians.
Ozturk's attorneys argue that her detention violated her First and Fifth Amendment rights, and are seeking to have her either released on bail or, as an alternative, transferred to Vermont from Louisiana. She is currently detained at a federal immigration facility in Basile, Louisiana.
Jessie Rossman, one of Ozturk's lawyers, told U.S. District Judge William Sessions during a hearing that the "sole basis" of Ozturk's arrest was an editorial she co-authored in the Tufts' student newspaper that criticized the school for its handling of several resolutions adopted by the undergraduate student senate in an effort to "hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law." Ozturk's attorneys also argued that the government's decision to transport Ozturk across three states — Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont — before she was sent to Louisiana was unusual and designed to punish Ozturk for protected speech.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-student-ice-hearing-jurisdiction/