A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to immediately release Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Tufts University Ph.D. student whom the government has been seeking to deport over her alleged sympathies to Hamas.
Ozturk, 30, has been in detention since being taken into custody by plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on a Boston street on March 25.
Her arrest — footage of which went viral on social media — came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio “terminated” her student visa over alleged “activities in support of Hamas,” the Palestinian terror group responsible for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Vermont-based US District Judge William Sessions, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, agreed with the claim from Ozturk’s lawyers that she was being detained for “simply and purely the expression that she made or shared in the op-ed in violation of her First Amendment rights.”
“Her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens,” Sessions said during the hearing. “Any one of them may now avoid exercising their First Amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center.”
Ozturk’s op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper criticized the university’s response to anti-Israel protests on campus and called for the school to divest from the Jewish state.
The Trump administration cited the op-ed as justification for revoking Ozturk’s student visa, noting in an April court filing that the Department of Homeland Security had determined the Turkish national was “involved in associations that ‘may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization,’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”
Sessions ruled that Ozturk poses “no risk of flight and no danger to the community” and determined she should be released on her own recognizance “without any form of Body-Worn GPS or other ICE monitoring at this time.”
The judge imposed no travel restrictions on Ozturk and asked the Trump administration to propose conditions of release by no later than May 12.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller slammed the ruling, describing it as a “judicial coup” against President Trump.
“We cannot individually litigate every single visa that we want to revoke,” Miller told reporters.
Days after Ozturk’s arrest, the Trump administration was blocked from deporting her by US District Court Judge Denise Casper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
Sessions will take up arguments in her underlying lawsuit at a later date.
“We are so relieved that Rumeysa will soon be back in Massachusetts, and won’t stop fighting until she is free for good,” Jessie Rossman, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing Ozturk, said in a statement after Friday’s ruling.
Tufts has said it plans to assist Ozturk with housing upon her release, according to Reuters.
A university spokesperson told the outlet that Tufts hopes Ozturk can resume her studies once she is back in Massachusetts.
With Post wires
