Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts graduate student who was arrested by ICE on a Somerville sidewalk last month, was denied bond Wednesday by a federal immigration judge in Louisiana.
After Öztürk was taken into ICE custody in Massachusetts, she was quickly moved to New Hampshire, Vermont, and then to a detention center in Louisiana. She remains there as her lawyers fight to, at the very least, have her returned to Vermont. They say the government violated Öztürk’s constitutional rights during her arrest and detainment.
Government lawyers argue that her case belongs in immigration court in Louisiana, where Öztürk sought release during a hearing Wednesday. That request was denied, according to her lawyers. The immigration judge concluded that Öztürk is both a flight risk and a danger to her community, they wrote in a document that was filed in the separate ongoing case in Vermont.
A federal judge in Boston transferred that case to Vermont earlier this month and barred the government from deporting her unless, and until, the Vermont court orders otherwise.
Öztürk is a Turkish national and former Fulbright scholar who is pursuing her PhD in child and human development at Tufts. The Trump administration revoked her student visa without notifying her, and a few days later ICE agents arrested her as she left her apartment to break Ramadan fast with friends. Video of the arrest went viral, prompting widespread anger.
The federal government, in a purported effort to fight antisemitism, is revoking the student visas of many linked in some way to pro-Palestine demonstrations. Öztürk co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily last year that called for divestment from Israel and for administrators to more vocally acknowledge human rights abuses happening in Gaza. The State Department said that Öztürk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.”