(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in Vermont has ordered that a Tufts University doctoral student be released on bail from ICE custody after her visa was revoked by the Trump administration.
Rumeysa Ozturk testified remotely at her bail hearing Friday from the detention facility in Louisiana where she has been held since ICE agents detained her near her home in Massachusetts on March 25.
Her lawyers argued that the Turkish national and former Fulbright scholar is being targeted by the Trump administration because of a column she co-wrote in her student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to resolutions approved by the Tufts Community Union Senate.
Those resolutions called on the university to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel,” she wrote in the op-ed.
The judge ordered her released on bail while the government’s case against her proceeds.
In sworn declarations and court hearings, Ozturk and her lawyers stressed the urgent need for her to be released, noting she has had at least 12 asthma attacks since she was detained. They also accused the detention facility of being overcrowded and unsanitary, which they said may be affecting her well-being.
Wearing a hijab, glasses, and an orange jumpsuit, Ozturk testified via Zoom about the humanitarian work she is involved in as part of her studies in child development. She also testified about her involvement in school groups and projects.
Ozturk told the judge that she organized an event she called “collective grieving for children experiencing war and conflicts” that aimed to help children “from Gaza to Israel, from Russia to Ukraine … from all parts of the world.”
“I think as people who are working in academia for child development and well-being, it is sometimes possible that we forget the emotional touch or grief extending to children that we don’t necessarily work with,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we don’t grieve for other children, all of them are ours, from all parts of the world experiencing very sad events including war and conflict.”
Ozturk said during the hearing that, should she be released on bail, Tufts has offered her several housing options she hopes to take up in order to finish her Ph.D.
At one point during the hearing, she was granted a break to take asthma medication after appearing at several points to clutch her chest as she struggled to speak. She testified she had an asthma attack at an airport in Atlanta when she was being transported to Louisiana.
“I was afraid and I was crying,” she testified, adding that her daily maintenance inhaler was not initially provided to her.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the government revoked Ozturk’s visa due to her pro-Palestinian activism.
“If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus — we’re not going to give you a visa,” stated Rubio, who said that the State Department may have revoked more than 300 student visas since the beginning of the second Trump administration.
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