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A federal judge in Burlington, Vermont, has ordered the US government to immediately release graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk from the private prison in Louisiana where ICE has been holding her since late March. And the judge means TOOT FUCKING SWEET.
Öztürk was dragged off the street by masked ICE agents in front of her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, on March 25 — yes, that is six weeks ago — in a display of police-state theater intended to demonstrate that the Trump administration would use the full power of the law against any immigrants it can, including those who are in the US legally, like Öztürk, who’s working on a PhD at Tufts University.
US District Court Judge William Sessions III ruled that the government had unlawfully detained Öztürk for no crime at all, with little reason to jail her pending deportation other than the fact that she had co-authored an editorial in the university’s student newspaper condemning Israel’s war in Gaza and the university’s policies regarding campus protests. For engaging in that protected First Amendment activity, Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked Öztürk’s student visa and ordered her deported, claiming without any other evidence that she had acted “in support of Hamas.”
Sessions heard evidence from witnesses for several hours in this morning’s hearing, including from Öztürk, who testified via Zoom from prison in Louisiana. A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that she be transported to Vermont for her bail hearing, but she and her legal team agreed to the remote hearing today in hopes of being released ASAP. Looks like it worked, but we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed until there’s video of her leaving the prison. Maybe by the time we post this?
Sessions said the government hadn’t demonstrated any need to jail Öztürk while her immigration case is pending:
“That literally is the case. There is no evidence here … absent consideration of the op-ed,” the Clinton-appointed judge said, describing it as an apparent violation of her free speech rights. He also said Ozturk had made significant claims of due process violations. “Her continued detention cannot stand.”
He went on to say that the government’s harsh treatment of Öztürk risked chilling the free speech rights of “millions and millions” of noncitizens, who do in fact have such rights.
Öztürk testified that she has suffered increasingly severe asthma attacks while imprisoned, because she has little time in fresh air and is exposed to irritants like dirt and cleaning products that she’s normally able to avoid, and because she hasn’t been able to receive the asthma medications she uses at home. She also noted that a nurse at an ICE medical clinic mocked her hijab, telling her to “take that thing from my head” and removed it, failing to return it to her at the end of her visit.
Judge Sessions didn’t impose any restrictions on Öztürk’s movements after her release on her own recognizance, although the government may later ask for limits on her ability to travel. But that’ll be part of her immigration case, not her habeas corpus hearing, which was Sessions’s only concern.
Öztürk’s attorneys and supporting witnesses have argued that she’s not a flight risk, and Tufts has agreed to let her live in student housing while she fights the revocation of her visa and the deportation order.
In a moment that made yr Doktor Zoom tear up a little because he’s a liberal squish, Öztürk’s dissertation director, Dr. Sara K. Johnson, said that Öztürk is a “role model” for other grad students, and generally kvelled about what a terrific scholar she is. Johnson also noted that Öztürk is completely taken with Johnson’s cats, although she can’t meet them because of her allergies, and OMG how sweet is that and why are we treating this sweet person who’s studying the effects of war and trauma on children as some kind of enemy?
So there’s your good news for today. Rümeysa Öztürk still has to face the insane claim that she’s a danger to the USA despite never being charged with a crime, but barring any further fuckery from the Trump regime, she will be able to carry on that fight from a dorm, not from a prison cell.
Let’s hope her release is only the first of MANY.
Update: Also, while Öztürk’s hearing was taking place in Vermont, the Appeals Court for the Second District, in New York, denied the government’s request to let it throw Columbia undergraduate student Mohsen Mahdawi back in prison while his immigration case moves forward. He’s the guy who was arrested at the end of his citizenship interview, because the cruel ironies are the point; he was recently released on bail after a judge determined he wasn’t a flight risk. For now, he too will remain free!
Another Update: Rümeysa Öztürk has been released from prison!
[Politico / Anna Bower on Bluesky / John Hawkinson on Bluesky]
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