Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University graduate student arrested by federal immigration agents in March outside her Somerville apartment, must be returned to Vermont from Louisiana for a hearing over her detention, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New York, rejected the Trump administration’s claim federal courts have no role in cases involving deportation.
The judges noted the 30-year-old Turkish PhD student specifically challenged her arrest and detention as unlawful, in what’s known as a habeas corpus petition and is a separate legal question from whether the government can revoke her student visa and deport her.
The federal judge in that detention case has scheduled a bail hearing for Friday in Vermont. But since the appeals panel gave the government one week to return Öztürk to Vermont from the detention facility in Louisiana, it’s unclear whether she will appear at the bail hearing remotely or if it will be rescheduled so she can appear in person.
Öztürk was arrested March 25 on a street in Somerville by ICE agents who drove her through New Hampshire and Vermont. At the time, her lawyers had filed a habeas petition in Massachusetts challenging her detention, which was subsequently transferred to the federal district court in Vermont. She was later flown to a detention center in Basile, La.
“The District of Vermont is likely the proper venue to adjudicate Öztürk’s habeas petition because, at the time she filed, she was physically in Vermont and her immediate custodian was unknown,” the court ruled.
The ruling came just one day after a hearing before the appellate judges in New York City on Tuesday, in which Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign insisted a lower court ruling in Öztürk’s favor was legally invalid because federal courts no longer have jurisdiction.
The appeals court roundly disagreed.
“We conclude that the government is unlikely to prevail on its arguments that various jurisdiction-stripping provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) on which the government relies deprive the district court of jurisdiction over Öztürk’s challenge to her detention," the panel ruled.
The ruling was welcomed by Öztürk‘s legal team, which includes American Civil Liberties Union attorney Esha Bhandari who argued on her behalf Tuesday.
Öztürk was a coauthor of a March 2024 opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper that expressed pro-Palestinian views. She was taken into custody by masked ICE agents during the administration’s crackdown on antisemitism on campuses.
“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,“ Bhandari said in a statement. ”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.”
In court Tuesday, Ensign also argued that Öztürk should remain in Louisiana because her lawyers did not name the correct official in her habeas petition.
But the appellate judges on Wednesday said the administration caused the confusion by shuttling her from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to Vermont and then to Louisiana over 24 hours, despite a federal judge’s order that she remain in Massachusetts.
The court also said the administration’s claim, made by Ensign, that ICE did not need to tell anyone where Öztürk was during those 24 hours, was a deeply flawed legal argument.
“The government cites no statute or case law for this extraordinary proposition, the practical effect of which would be that for some unspecified period of time after detention — seemingly however long the government chooses to take in transporting a detainee between states or between facilities — a detainee would be unable to file a habeas petition at all, anywhere,” the court concluded.
The court said that “such a rule finds no support in the law and is contrary to longstanding tradition.”
Öztürk has sought to be released on bail and resume her doctoral research at Tufts, whose main campus is in Medford, while fighting her deportation case.
She was studying child and human development at Tufts when she was taken into custody after the Trump administration revoked her student visa without her knowledge, according to her legal team.
“Today, we moved one step closer to returning Rümeysa to her community and studies in Massachusetts,” another of her attorneys, Jessie Rossman of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement on Wednesday.
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 the all-women detention facility in Louisiana where she is being held. She cited crowded dorms and a lack of appropriate medical care for prolonged asthma attacks.
On April 22, members of Massachusetts’ congressional delegation visited Öztürk at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile. After the visit, Senator Edward Markey and Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern strongly condemned the living conditions there. On Wednesday, the lawmakers applauded the decision from the appeals court.
“Rümeysa’s case is part of an alarming trend by the Trump administration to trample individuals’ constitutional rights to due process and free speech,” Markey, Pressley, and McGovern said in a joint statement. “Rümeysa must be released and have her visa restored immediately, and we will continue to ring the alarm loudly until that is the case.”
Wednesday’s unanimous ruling was issued by Judge Alison J. Nathan, appointed by President Joe Biden; Susan L. Carney, appointed by President Barack Obama; and Barrington D. Parker, who was nominated by President George W. Bush.
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.