Updated at 5:57 p.m.
A federal judge in Vermont has ordered the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University graduate student who was arrested by masked federal agents in March.
U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III said on Friday that Ozturk presents “absolutely” no danger to the community, nor does she pose a flight risk, and that her continued detention could severely impact both her academic pursuits and her health.
Ozturk, a 34-year-old Turkish national with a student visa, suffers from asthma that she says has dramatically worsened during her six-week-long detention at an immigration facility in Louisiana.
Sessions seemed underwhelmed by the government’s attempt to keep Ozturk locked up indefinitely. He emphasized that the only evidence offered to justify her arrest and detention appears to be an op-ed she coauthored in a student newspaper that was critical of Israel.
“There is absolutely no evidence that she engaged in violence, or advocated violence,” he said.
He added that her detention threatens to chill the speech of the millions of other noncitizens living in America who may now fear that speaking their minds would lead to them being “whisked away to a detention center from their home.”
He ordered the federal government to immediately release Ozturk from the detention facility. She will be allowed to return to Massachusetts, where she attends Tufts, and can travel the country freely, so long as she shows up for all of her Vermont court hearings.
Her attorneys say they will help her get back to Massachusetts upon her release. Tufts has also said she can live on campus once her apartment lease expires later this month.
Mahsa Khanbabai, one of Ozturk’s attorneys, expressed relief in a press release on Friday but said her client never should have been arrested. “When did speaking up against oppression become a crime?” Khanbabai said. “When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?”
Ozturk has been detained since March 25, when armed agents plucked her off a street outside Boston while she was on the phone with her mother and stuffed her into an unmarked car. The agents then drove her to Vermont and held her there overnight before transferring her south.
Her arrest was caught on video, leading to widespread public outrage, including in Vermont, where a case challenging her detention has played out because it is where she was when her attorneys filed a petition seeking her release.
Sessions previously ordered that Ozturk be returned to Vermont by May 1, but federal prosecutors appealed his decision. On Wednesday, a federal appellate court affirmed the judge’s ruling and said the government must return Ozturk by May 14.
She attended Friday’s hearing remotely, wearing an orange jumpsuit.
Ozturk is among a handful of U.S. college students whom the Trump administration has arrested and tried to deport as part of a purported effort to crack down on antisemitism. Federal officials have accused the students of voicing opinions and having associations that could undermine U.S. foreign policy. Advocates dispute those characterizations and say the students have been targeted in retaliation for lawfully protected speech.
On Friday, Ozturk’s attorneys called several witnesses, including Ozturk herself, to describe the consequences of her 45-day detainment.
Ozturk said she has learned to keep her asthma in check since her diagnosis a few years ago by avoiding environmental triggers such as pollen, pet hair and strong fragrances. But since her arrest, she’s spent upwards of 22 hours a day alongside 23 other women in a mice-infested cell intended for 14 people.
She said stress, dust and the smell of cleaning supplies have contributed to increasingly frequent and severe asthma attacks.
Dr. Jessica McCannon, a pulmonologist from Massachusetts General Hospital, said it’s no wonder Ozturk’s symptoms have intensified amid her current living conditions. Her asthma would likely worsen the longer she remained in prison, the doctor testified, to the point that she may eventually require emergency care.
Ozturk coughed repeatedly during the hearing and at one point excused herself while her attorney relayed that she was having another asthma attack.
It’s not just her health that’s in jeopardy: Ozturk, who is pursuing a doctoral degree in child development, has been researching how teens use social media to benefit other people and is less than a year away from securing her PhD. But it has been impossible to work on her dissertation while imprisoned, she said. She has also missed some important opportunities, including a chance to present her research at a national conference.
Ozturk’s adviser, Sara Johnson, said her academic rigor has made her a “role model” to her peers and that her absence has been a “devastating loss” to the campus community.
Unlike in the case involving Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, the Trump administration made no effort on Friday to argue that Ozturk posed a danger or a flight risk.
The government’s attorney, Michael Drescher, called no witnesses and spoke only a few times, mostly to raise the same technical arguments that both Sessions and the appellate court have shot down. Toward the hearing’s conclusion, he asked Sessions to allow immigration officials to place their own conditions on Ozturk’s release.
Sessions denied the request, but he said the government could submit limited conditions in writing for him to consider. He ordered Ozturk to check in monthly with the Burlington Community Justice Center, a city department that has offered to support her upon her release.
It is the second time in two weeks that a Vermont judge has rejected the federal government’s attempts to keep a student locked up indefinitely. Last month, a judge ordered the release of Mahdawi, a Columbia University student from White River Junction who was arrested during a naturalization interview.
On Thursday, Mahdawi joined state officials and nonprofit leaders at the Vermont Statehouse to announce the launch of a new legal defense fund for immigrants. Unlike in criminal cases, the federal government is not obligated to provide legal representation for civil deportation proceedings, and some defendants never speak with an attorney before they’re kicked out of the country.
The fund aims to raise $1 million to support Vermont nonprofits that provide free legal assistance to immigrants.
Though freed, both Mahdawi and Ozturk still remain in limbo, as the federal government is expected to continue deportation proceedings against them in Louisiana.
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