A federal judge in Boston considered Thursday a case involving a Tufts University Ph.D. student taken into custody in Massachusetts and moved by Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to Louisiana last week.
The government claimed in a filing Tuesday that Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student and Fulbright Scholar, had already been removed from Massachusetts before a judge issued an order for her to stay in the state, which prosecutors said strips the district court in Massachusetts of jurisdiction to hear the case.
The Justice Department said in its filing that Ozturk had already been transferred to an ICE detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Attorneys for Ozturk had filed a habeas petition to block her removal from Massachusetts, as well as from the United States, and U.S. District Judge Denise Casper issued a new order several days after Ozturk was detained barring her removal from the U.S. to allow her to resolve the jurisdictional questions.
Casper probed Ozturk’s lawyers and the Justice Department about whether the habeas petition was filed in the appropriate venue, the court in Massachusetts, or whether the case should be transferred to Louisiana, where Ozturk is now being held. The student’s lawyers are seeking an order that requires immigration officials to return Ozturk to Massachusetts and immediately release her while proceedings continue.
She did not issue a decision on whether Ozturk’s case should be moved, instead saying she was “inclined to wrestle” with the question.
An attorney for the student argued that her whereabouts remained unknown to her lawyers in the hours after her arrest, and said not even the government’s lawyers knew where she was, a situation Ozturk’s attorney said it “quite unusual.”
She accused immigration officials of ignoring the initial order preventing Ozturk’s immediate removal out of Massachusetts and for failing to disclose her location to her lawyers.
“Here, we have a situation where it’s the government that is forum shopping, that is whisking away a petitioner to its forum of choice and doing everything in its power to ensure that a habeas petition cannot be filed,” the lawyer said.
An acting Homeland Security Department official filed a sworn statement saying Ozturk was arrested on March 25 in Somerville, Massachusetts, where Tufts is located, and then moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire, then to St. Albans, Vermont, overnight. She was again moved at 4 a.m. on March 26 to Burlington, Vermont, before she was finally transferred to the ICE detention center in Basile. The court’s order blocking her removal from Massachusetts was issued while Ozturk was in Vermont, and Ozturk’s lawyers said her case could also be transferred there.
A Justice Department lawyer sought to draw a distinction between Ozturk’s lawyers not knowing where their client was, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement not being forthcoming about her location. He asked the court to dismiss Ozturk’s petition outright or remove the case to Louisiana.
“ICE was still in the process of transferring her through Vermont at the time that the petition was filed,” he said.
The Justice Department said the decision to move Ozturk to Louisiana was made before she was taken into custody because there is no detention center in Massachusetts for a female detainee.
Ozturk, who’s in the U.S. on a student visa, was detained on her way to a Ramadan Iftar dinner on March 25. Surveillance footage showed six plainclothes ICE agents who appeared to be wearing masks stopping Ozturk on the street and taking her into custody.
She’s one of several students at American universities whose visas were revoked after they expressed support for Palestinians during the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Ozturk’s attorneys argue her detention violates her constitutional rights to free speech and due process, and have asked for her immediate return to Massachusetts and for her to be freed from government custody.
On Wednesday, Tufts president Sunil Kumar submitted a declaration defending Ozturk and supporting her motion regarding her release and return to Massachusetts. Kumar said the university “has no information to support the allegations that she was engaged in activities at Tufts that warrant her arrest and detention.”
He said that on March 26, the university received a notice stating that Ozturk was a “‘non-immigrant status violator'” and citing the Immigration and Naturalization Act, it said “the United States believed that her presence in the country would result in ‘potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.'”
Ozturk was one of four students at Tufts University who co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts Daily college paper in March 2024 urging the university to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.” There is no mention of Hamas in the article. Kumar said the op-ed was consistent with the university’s free speech policies and there were “opinions that were shared just as strongly” on other sides of the issue.
“The University has no further information suggesting that she has acted in a manner that would constitute a violation of the University’s understanding of the Immigration and Naturalization Act,” Kumar wrote. He asked that Ozturk “receive the due process rights to which she is entitled,” so she can return to Tufts to finish her studies and her degree.
At the time of Ozturk’s detention, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” but did not provide details about her alleged activities. The government’s filing Tuesday also contained no details about alleged ties to Hamas.
The Justice Department’s argument regarding jurisdiction — that the habeas petition arguments should be held where the person is being detained — has been used by the government in other court cases involving the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, including in the case of former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil and in the cases of five Venezuelan men who sued to block their deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has touted the administration’s cancellation of more than 300 student visas so far and said that student visas are meant to encourage studying and getting degrees, “not to become a social activist” and “tear up our university campuses.”
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