A still from surveillance video showing Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk (seen at right) being taken into custody in Somerville, Massachusetts.
A judge has ordered the case of a Tufts University doctoral student from Turkey who was detained by immigration authorities, sparking outrage in Massachusetts, be moved to federal court in Vermont, rather than keep the case in Massachusetts or move it to Louisiana, where she's been in custody.
Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, was taken into custody as she walked along a street in Somerville on March 25. After being transported to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
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Her lawyers had argued the case should be handled by the federal court in Massachusetts, while U.S. government attorneys said it should be dismissed and go before an immigration judge or transferred to Louisiana — they said Ozturk had been moved to Vermont by the time U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston ordered authorities to keep her in Massachusetts, and that there was no available "bedspace" for her to stay in New England.
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After a hearing on Thursday, Casper on Friday ordered that subsequent hearings take place in Vermont, though her order keeping the government from deporting Ozturk remains in effect.
Casper noted that Ozturk's legal team raised "serious issues as to the conduct of her arrest and detention" but that, first, it was necessary to determine where the lawsuit would be adjudicated.
One of Ozturk's lawyers, Mahsa Khanbabai, said in a statement the ruling "sends a clear message that the government cannot manipulate jurisdiction in order to target human rights defenders, in violation of their First Amendment rights."
