Öztürk’s case made national news over the past several weeks after video surfaced showing masked federal immigration agents arresting her outside of her apartment in Somerville. Öztürk had been in the United States on a student visa, but the Trump administration canceled it, arrested her, and whisked her off to a detention facility in Louisiana pending deportation. She had not known about the visa being revoked.
Last week, Sessions ruled that Öztürk’s case should proceed in Vermont, which was where she was being held when her lawyers first filed an appeal. The Trump administration has sought to move ahead with the case in Louisiana, where she remains.
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The government appealed, seeking to keep her in Louisiana, to which her lawyers objected, leading to Sessions’ new ruling on Thursday.
The federal appeals court that covers Vermont is known as generally progressive, while the one that includes Louisiana is conservative, immigration lawyers have said, accusing the administration of what is known as “judge shopping.”
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Öztürk has not been charged with a crime. The administration has cited an article she wrote for the student newspaper at Tufts that was critical of the university’s handling of Israel’s actions in the conflict in Gaza as the reason for her visa termination.
Öztürk’s lawyers have also filed a motion to have the government turn over documents reported by the Washington Post that, according to the newspaper, suggest there’s no basis for detention beyond that article. Sessions has yet to rule on that motion.
The case comes amid a crackdown on what the Trump administration calls antisemitism on college campuses. The administration has canceled hundreds of student visas and moved to cut federal funding from colleges Trump paints as left-wing propagandists.
In a statement Wednesday, Öztürk’s lawyer Mahsa Khanbabai said the country’s immigration system is “being manipulated to detain people who pose no threat to our community, to break them down, and coerce them to give up having their fair day in court.”
“The government sees international students winning their cases throughout federal courts in the US and is terrified that if Rümeysa’s case is heard, she too will win,” she said.
Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, which is part of Öztürk’s legal team, echoed the sentiment.
“The government late last night filed a notice of appeal and motion for a stay, seeking to keep Rümeysa Öztürk imprisoned in a Louisiana detention center — away from her community and legal team," she said. “She is being locked up simply for co-authoring an op-ed in her student newspaper. The government’s actions are cruel and unconstitutional, and we will oppose the government’s motion and continue to fight for her return and release.”
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On Tuesday, members of Congress from Massachusetts flew to Louisiana to meet with Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University who was also detained by ICE amid the recent crackdown.
In an interview after the visit, Representative Ayanna Pressley said the facts they found on the visit “are damning, they are concerning.”
In the all-women facility in Basile, La., detainees gravitated toward Pressley, as the only woman who was part of the delegation on the visit, she said.
“The women that we just met in here, at Basile, have questioned if God has forgotten about them, if the world has forgotten about them,” Pressley said. “And we are here to let them know that we have not forgotten about them, and we are fighting for them.”
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.
