Appeals court rules that Rumeysa Ozturk should be moved to Vermont

A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Tufts University PhD candidate Rumeysa Ozturk must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont in a blow to the Trump administration.

Ozturk was detained by immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) agents on 25 March.

She is one of several foreign students in the US on legal visas who have been arrested by the Trump administration in its crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices.

Ozturk’s lawyers said she was arrested for co-authoring an opinion article in a student newspaper. She has not been charged with any crime.

Activists and legal experts have said moving her to Louisiana put her in a court system that could be more favourable to Trump’s deportation push.

Last month, a judge in Massachusetts ordered that Ozturk’s case be moved to Vermont, where she was previously being held. Judge William Sessions III, who is overseeing the Vermont case, gave the federal government a 1 May deadline to transfer Ozturk.

The federal government appealed that decision. 

Wednesday’s ruling is a strike against the federal government’s push to keep Ozturk in Louisiana, a Republican-leaning state. It likely marks the first time that a federal appeals court has determined in which state the Trump administration can detain students.

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