NEW YORK — The Trump administration’s efforts to deport Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk and Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi for speaking out about the war in Gaza should be resolved in Vermont, lawyers for the students argued before a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday.
The government, meanwhile, contended that the district court in Vermont should not have jurisdiction.
Arguments began first with Öztürk‘s case; her legal team argued that Öztürk, who is currently being held in Louisiana, should be brought to Vermont this week so that she can appear in-person for her Friday bail hearing in the US District Court there.
All spectator seats in the 17th floor courtroom were filled.
“Rümeysa Öztürk’s case is unprecedented and shocking,” Esha Bhandari of the ACLU, one of Öztürk’s attorneys, told the panel of judges. “She has been held behind bars for six weeks while her health deteriorates for writing an op-ed. . . . Neither the law nor the equities favor the government here.”
Bhandari said that Öztürk’s goal is to be allowed to resume her studies at Tufts University while the issues are dealt with in court. The Trump administration wants Öztürk to remain in Louisiana, where she is currently being held in an ICE detention center.
Lawyers for Öztürk and Mahdawi contend their First Amendment rights have been violated because the government has moved to deport them — they are both legally in the United States — solely due to their public stances on the war in Gaza. Öztürk was studying at Tufts on a student visa, and Mahdawi is a legal permanent resident.
Drew Ensign, a lawyer for the Justice Department, repeatedly told the judges that a “jurisdiction stripping” law ended, or severely limited, the role of federal judges in deciding habeas petitions linked to deportation proceedings.
At one point, Judge Barrington D. Parker pushed Ensign to declare whether the administration believes Öztürk and Mahdawi are right when they claim they are being punished for speaking out about the war in Gaza on their respective campuses last year.
“Does the government contest that the speech in both cases was protected speech?” Parker asked Ensign.
“We have not taken a position on that,” he replied.
“Help my thinking along, take a position,” the judge asked.
“I don’t have authority to take a position on that right now,” Ensign said.
Government officials said that its detention facility in St. Albans, Vt., doesn’t have the equipment that would allow virtual appearances for immigration court hearings held in Louisiana.
“We‘ve identified some operational harms that would come from that,” Ensign said.
Judge Susan L. Carney appeared unimpressed.
“It seems certainly possible in the ordinary world that [Mahdawi] would be able to participate in the actual removal proceedings remotely from Vermont,” Carney said. “What more is there than just setting up a Zoom computer?”
The government has also argued that Öztürk’s habeus petition is invalid because her lawyers didn’t name the right defendant, who should be the immediate custodian, or the person in charge of her detention. Her lawyers had named Patricia Hyde, the New England field director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But when the judges pressed the Department of Justice attorney on who exactly should have been named, Ensign had trouble naming anyone specific.
“I don’t specifically have that knowledge, but the government would,” Ensign said.
Judge Parker seemed surprise at the response, and told Ensign: “You’re the government.”
Both students were seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during the Trump administration’s crackdown on what it describes as antisemitism on college campuses.
Öztürk was studying child and human development at Tufts when she was taken into custody by masked ICE agents in Somerville on March 25 after the Trump administration revoked her student visa. She was taken to New Hampshire, then Vermont, and then to the detention facility in Louisiana.
Öztürk, 30, was a coauthor of a March 2024 opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper that expressed pro-Palestinian views.
A Turkish national, Öztürk has chronic asthma. On Friday, she submitted a declaration with the district court in Vermont in which she detailed the conditions she said she was enduring inside of the all-women detention facility where she is being held, including crowded dorms, and a lack of appropriate medical care for prolonged asthma attacks.
Mahdawi, who was active during the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University in 2024, was released on bail by US District Court Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford last week. He had been arrested on April 14 during a citizenship interview in Colchester, Vt.
The government requested that Mahdawi’s case be heard alongside Öztürk’s on Tuesday, a motion which both Mahdawi and Öztürk’s legal teams opposed.
Mahdwai, 34, was expected to graduate Columbia in May before beginning a master’s degree program there in the fall.
The judges took the issues under advisement, and did not immediately make a ruling.
After the court hearing, Bhandari told the Boston Globe that they hoped appellate the court rules quickly, and permits Öztürk’s immediate transfer to Vermont for the bail hearing on Friday.
“We feel good about how it went today,” Bhandari said.
Bhandari said that the team is grateful that both the district court, and the appellate court, have been “acting expeditiously.”
“This is about whether she can get her fair day in court,” Bhandari said.
When the hearing ended, about about thirty people were gathered to show support for Öztürk, Mahdawi, and others affected by the Trump administration’s immigration policies. A number of the demonstrators carried signs that said “Free Rümeysa,” and held up a now well-known picture of Öztürk, in which she leans on her right hand and smiles gently.
Russell Miller, a children’s media scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, had been there since 9:30am, and stayed outside the courthouse until the proceedings had concluded. Miller, 69, said he was a colleague of Öztürk’s in the children’s media world, and had met Öztürk a few times through shared research circles. He came out on Tuesday to call for her to be released from detention.
“We know her to be a fine, soft-spoken, thoughtful and peaceful young woman,” Miller said. What Öztürk was doing by co-authoring the op-ed, was “upholding one of the great American freedoms,” Miller said; “the freedom to express your opinion in the press.”
John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe. Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at giulia.mcdnr@globe.com. Follow her @giuliamcdnr.