Rümeysa Öztürk returned to Boston at the weekend after being released less than 24 hours after courts ruled that Badar Khan Suri’s case must be heard in Virginia and Mahmoud Khalil’s case must remain in New Jersey.
Hands Off Students protest on April 4 in New York against the seizure and detention of pro-Palestine activists. (Pamela Drew, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, jailed for being a co-author of an op-ed article critical of Israel, arrived in Boston on Saturday after a federal judge released her from six weeks detention in Louisiana.
She told reporters at a Logan Airport press conference: “America is the greatest democracy in the world and I believe in those values that we share. I have faith in the American system of justice.”
Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts told the press briefing: “You have made millions and millions of people across our country so proud of the way you have fought, you have resisted, you have stood up to injustice.”
Öztürk was one of four co-authors of an Op-Ed article in the student newspaper, The Tufts Daily, which called on the university to recognize what Israel is doing in Gaza as genocide and to divest from Israel.
Öztürk was the third detained international scholar in 24 hours last week to secure a victory in a case against the Trump administration when a federal appeals panel ordered the government to release Öztürk from the crowded Louisiana detention center to which she was sent hours after plainclothes immigration agents arrested her in March.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its ruling weeks after U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III in Vermont ordered the administration to return Öztürk to the New England state, where she had been located when her attorneys filed a habeas corpus petition on her behalf.
[See: The Tufts Daily: Timeline of Öztürk Case]
Sessions’ ruling had demanded that Öztürk be returned to Vermont for a hearing by May 1, but she remained in Louisiana — where the Trump administration has sent numerous foreign students marked for deportation to ensure their cases would be handled by conservative judges — as the White House appealed the case to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
That court said last Wednesday that Öztürk must be sent back to Vermont by this Wednesday, where a federal judge will hold a hearing on her habeas corpus petition on May 22.
BREAKING: Second Circuit panel, one day after arguments, unanimously rejects government’s arguments and orders that Rumeysa Ozturk be transferred to Vermont no later than May 14. https://t.co/qXVOLnSG4D pic.twitter.com/3e9RaHREs3
— Chris “Law Dork” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) May 7, 2025
Öztürk’s lawyers argue that the government is unconstitutionally retaliating against her for co-writing an op-ed in her school newspaper last year in which she called on Tufts to divest from companies tied to Israel and its bombardment of Gaza.
She was detained in March by plainclothes immigration agents—some of whom wore masks—near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts.
[Related: US House Stops Bill Imprisoning Boycotters of Israel]
“No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views,” said Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, which is helping to represent Öztürk.
“Every day that Rümeysa Öztürk remains in detention is a day too long. We’re grateful the court refused the government’s attempt to keep her isolated from her community and her legal counsel as she pursues her case for release,” Bhandari said.
Lawyers recently submitted new filings in Öztürk’s case in Vermont, describing her living conditions for nearly two months in Louisiana.
[See: American Rendition: Journey to a Louisiana Cell]
In a cramped room with 23 other women, Öztürk suffered progressively more severe asthma attacks and was exposed to insect and rodent droppings and a lack of fresh air — triggers for asthma.
“Rümeysa has suffered six weeks in crowded confinement without adequate access to medical care and in conditions that doctors say risk exacerbating her asthma attacks. Her detention — over an op-ed she co-authored in her student newspaper — is as cruel as it is unconstitutional,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts.
“Today, we moved one step closer to returning Rümeysa to her community and studies in Massachusetts.”
Here is chilling video of Fulbright scholar and Tufts U student Rumeysa Ozturk being snatched by masked ICE agents from the streets of Boston yesterday. Her supposed sin: publishing an article in support of Palestinian rights.
Patently illegal. ??https://t.co/jEGxTuoZDV pic.twitter.com/Ptvl7ixH5w
— Steven Donziger (@SDonziger) March 26, 2025
Progress in Two Other Cases
The ACLU this week was also celebrating another “huge blow for the Trump administration” in the case of Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri, who was also arrested in March by masked immigration agents before being secretly transported first to Louisiana and then to Texas.
A federal court ruled Suri’s habeas corpus case should be heard in a court in Virginia, where he was living with his wife and young children when he was detained.
The Department of Homeland Security said Suri was “rendered deportable” under the Immigration and Nationality Act because he was found “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” — claims for which DHS offered no evidence.
His lawyers have argued he was being detained for constitutionally protected speech in support of Palestinian rights.
A federal court in Virginia is now set to hear Suri’s case regarding his demand to be returned to Virginia and released on bond on Wednesday.
Eden Heilman, legal director for the ACLU of Virginia, said the court rejected the Trump administration’s effort to “find a court it believed would be friendlier to its unlawful detention of people advocating for Palestinian rights.”
“We are pleased the court saw through the Trump administration’s attempts to manipulate the law, and we won’t stop fighting until Dr. Khan Suri is reunited with his family,” said Heilman.
Meanwhile, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia last Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s effort to appeal the issue of where former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil’s habeas corpus case should be heard, ensuring that a federal court in New Jersey — where Khalil was detained when the petition was filed — will remain the venue for the case.
[See: The Chris Hedges Report: America’s Constitutional Crisis]
The Trump administration has been pushing for Khalil’s case to be heard in Louisiana, where he has also been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention since March.
That was when ICE agents accosted him and his pregnant wife and took him away in an unmarked vehicle — eventually sending him 1,400 miles away from his wife and his legal counsel, where he remained last month during the birth of his first child.
Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, expressed hope that last week’s ruling “sends a strong message to other courts around the country facing government attempts to shop for favorable jurisdictions by moving people detained on unconstitutional immigration charges around.”
“It is the fundamental job of the judiciary,” said Kaufman, “to stand up to this kind of government manipulation of our basic rights.”
Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Why do the nazi like “immigration agents” wear masks when arresting people?