Judge denies Justice Department's effort to move detained Tufts student's case to Louisiana
Washington — A federal judge on Friday rejected an effort by the Justice Department to throw out a Tufts University Ph.D. student's challenge to her detention after she was taken into custody by immigration authorities or have her case moved to Louisiana, finding instead that her case should be transferred to Vermont.
In addition to ruling that the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student, should be moved to a different court, U.S. District Judge Denies Casper blocked the government from removing Ozturk from the U.S. to ensure she has the opportunity to have her petition challenging her detention heard in Vermont.
Casper, who sits on the district court in Massachusetts, was weighing a case involving Ozturk, who was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside of her Somerville, Massachusetts, apartment on March 25 after her student visa was revoked.
While a letter dated March 25 did not state the basis for revocation of her visa, Ozturk had co-authored an editorial published in March 2024 in the school newspaper that criticized Tufts for dismissing several resolutions adopted by the undergraduate student Senate in an effort to "hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law."
She is one of several students at American universities who have had their visas revoked after expressing support for Palestinians during Israel's ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza.
Following Ozturk's arrest, immigration officials took her from Somerville to Methuen, Massachusetts, and then to Lebanon, New Hampshire, according to court filings. From there, she was brought to an ICE field office in St. Albans, Vermont, and was held there overnight. The following morning, on March 26, Ozturk was taken to the airport in Burlington, Vermont, and flown to Alexandria, Louisiana, where her custody was transferred to an immigration detention facility in Basile, Louisiana.
Ozturk's lawyers wrote in court filings that they, as well as her friends and family, were unable to confirm her whereabouts in the hours after her arrest, and filed a petition challenging her detention with the federal court in Massachusetts since that is where she was arrested.
Shortly after the petition was filed on the night of March 25, a federal judge issued an order blocking the government from moving Ozturk outside of Massachusetts without notice. Several days later, Casper issued a second order prohibiting the government from removing Ozturk from the U.S. while it considered jurisdictional issues.
Casper convened a hearing Thursday to consider whether Ozturk's challenge to her detention should proceed in Massachusetts, as her lawyers wanted, or Louisiana, where the government said it should be heard. Ozturk's lawyers also said the case could be transferred to Vermont.
The judge said in her 26-page decision that Vermont is the appropriate venue for Ozturk's challenge, since that is where she was confined overnight at the time her habeas petition was filed. Casper said that Ozturk could not be faulted for filing her petition in the Massachusetts court, since her lawyers didn't know her whereabouts.
"The irregularity of the arrest, detention and processing here is coupled with the failure to disclose Ozturk's whereabouts even after the government was aware that she had counsel and the petition was filed in this court," she wrote.
The judge wrote that while the Justice Department said it had arranged for Ozturk to be transported to Louisiana before her arrest, that assertion "does not necessarily show lack of attempt to manipulate jurisdiction where that plan continued (apparently uninterrupted) even after the government was aware of the petition."
