Appeals Court Orders Rümeysa Öztürk Tranferred to Vermont

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the order of a federal District Court that Rümeysa Öztürk must be transferred from immigration detention in Louisiana to Vermont to await a judge’s decision about whether to release her on bail.

The ruling set a time limit of one week to complete the transfer.

No criminal charge has been filed against Öztürk. She was arrested 25 March 2025 along the street in Somerville, Massachusetts, by federal immigration agents in plainclothes. Most of them wore face masks. Videos of her arrest look like a kidnapping. She appears to have been detained in Vermont briefly, then quickly transported to a detention facility in Louisiana. Until after she had been transferred, her legal counsel could not find out her location.

The Department of Homeland Security justified her detention by claiming she took part in  “in activities in support of Hamas.”

Last year she co-authored an opinion piece in a university paper which criticized the university’s handling of resolutions from the student senate about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. One resolution sought to have the university president condemn “the Ongoing Genocide in Gaza.”

Her lawyers contend the government failed to produce evidence that she supports terrorism. With no evidence of links to terrorism, no crime and no violation of immigration rules, her lawyers say her arrest and detention violate her rights to due process and freedom of speech.

Government lawyers told the court in writing that ICE sent Öztürk and other detained immigrants to Louisiana due to insufficient space in facilities where they were arrested. Last month, a federal judge found ICE had space available in detention facilities in Maine,

But a federal judge in Massachusetts found earlier last month that there were detention beds available in Maine, a state close to Vermont and much closer to Öztürk’s legal counsel than Louisiana. Her asthma has worsened in the Louisiana facility.

The panel of Appeals Court judges wrote, “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.”

She is scheduled for a bail hearing before a federal judge in Vermont on Friday.

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