By Gloria Pazmino, CNN
(CNN) — A federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision to transfer Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk from a Louisiana immigration detention center back to custody in Vermont.
In an opinion released Wednesday, a three-judge panel with the US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New York said the government failed to make its case to keep Öztürk in Lousiana and ordered the Department of Justice to comply with the lower court’s order to transfer her to Vermont within a week for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained.
“To support the Court’s resolution of these issues, the Court orders that Ms. Öztürk be physically transferred to ICE custody within the District of Vermont no later than May 14, 2025,” Appeals court Judges Barrington Parker, Susan Carney and Alison Nathan wrote.
Öztürk is expected to attend a bail hearing for her release in Vermont on May 9. Because the government missed its initial deadline to move her as they sought a stay of the decision, Öztürk will have to attend the hearing virtually, her attorneys told the court Tuesday.
The decision is a loss for the Department of Justice, which has sought to present jurisdictional challenges in a number of cases involving non-citizens who have been detained after participating in protests against the war in Gaza, arguing that immigration courts – not state district federal courts – have jurisdiction over the cases.
In the opinion, the judges said the government failed to show it was likely to win its appeal and agreed that Vermont is the proper venue to hear Öztürk’s First Amendment claims.
The judges also wrote the government failed to prove it could suffer harm as a result of transferring Öztürk back to Vermont, an argument presented by Deputy Attorney General Drew Ensign during arguments on Tuesday.
“The balance of the equities disfavors a stay. Öztürk’s interest in participating in her scheduled habeas proceedings in person outweighs the government’s purported administrative and logistical costs,” the judges wrote.
During more than an hour of oral arguments Tuesday morning, the panel of judges wrestled with the Trump administration’s effort to deport Öztürk, the 30-year-old doctoral student whose attorney said is being targeted for co-writing an op-ed in the school’s newspaper in which she criticized Tufts’ response to a student government group’s call for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel because of the conflict in Gaza, among other demands.
Öztürk was detained by masked federal agents near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, in March. The Turkish national and PhD student was then sent across multiple jurisdictions in the span of 24 hours before ending up at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
The Department of Homeland Security has accused Öztürk without evidence of engaging “in activities in support of Hamas.”
The government’s appeal sought to pause the Vermont judges’ orders to bring Öztürk back to Vermont. The government argued the order was improper because Congress has said challenges to any government effort to deport someone must be adjudicated in immigration court.
In its motions, the government said it would suffer irreparable harm if it was prevented from removing people from the US who it doesn’t believe should be allowed to stay in the country.
“No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views. 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,” said Esha Bhandari, one of Öztürk’s attorneys and the deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
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This is a developing story and will be updated.
Appeals court rules Trump administration must move detained Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk to Vermont News Channel 3-12.
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