A federal appeals court in New York on Monday paused a lower court’s order to transfer Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk from a Louisiana immigration detention facility to Vermont for a hearing.
Öztürk’s transfer had been ordered by Judge William Sessions earlier this month; she was to be returned to his federal court in Vermont by May 1 to attend a bail hearing in person. But the government appealed to the Second Circuit last week in an emergency motion.
A panel of three judges will now consider in a May 6 hearing whether Öztürk can continue to be held in Louisiana during the government’s appeal.
Öztürk, a 30-year-old Turkish national, was arrested by plainclothes officers on March 25 on a residential street in Somerville and swiftly moved across state lines, first to New Hampshire and Vermont, before being flown to the Louisiana detention facility. Öztürk’s attorneys say she was unlawfully detained in retaliation for co-writing an op-ed in a student newspaper critical of the school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
The order Monday said: “The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the merits of the emergency motion for a stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.”
If the appeals court sides with the government, Öztürk’s lawyers have said the pause could extend her legal ordeal by months.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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