The legal team of Rümeysa Öztürk, the Turkish Tufts University student detained by immigration officials in Louisiana, urges the court to realize her transfer to Vermont – a decision approved by the court but appealed by the U.S. government earlier.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will hear arguments on whether a federal judge’s order to transfer Özturk should be granted or further delayed.
Turkish officials have also been following the case closely.
Özturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested on March 25 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Massachusetts for co-authoring an op-ed last year about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the school’s student newspaper.
Her lawyers argue that the arrest and continued detention violate her constitutional rights, including her First Amendment right to free speech and Fifth Amendment protections.
Following her arrest, authorities transported her through multiple states before flying her to the state of Louisiana.
In early April, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the challenge to ICE’s detention of Özturk should continue in Vermont, not Louisiana. A Vermont judge later agreed that her federal case should continue in Vermont and ordered ICE to transfer her back to a Vermont facility by May 1.
The government appealed on April 24, and last week, without ruling on the merits, the appeals court agreed to consider both the government’s request to keep her in Louisiana and her legal team’s opposition.
Her legal team said that since she arrived in Louisiana, Özturk has lived in a “cramped room with poor ventilation” with 23 other women for almost all hours of the day.
In new filings in her federal court case in Vermont, Özturk said she has suffered several asthma attacks that have “become progressively harder to recover from” while in detention.
“Whereas her attacks used to last between 5-15 minutes, they now can last up to 45 minutes. She is regularly exposed to asthma triggers, including insect and rodent droppings, and is almost never exposed to fresh air,” according to the filing.