An immigration judge on Wednesday denied bond for Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student from Turkey who was detained last month after her visa was revoked, her lawyers said.
Öztürk, 30, is in custody at a federal detention facility in Basile, Louisiana, where she was eventually transferred after being detained last month by immigration authorities outside her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Her attorneys — who allege she was detained after co-writing an op-ed in the campus newspaper — argue her detention violated her First and Fifth Amendment rights, and are seeking to have her either released on bail or transferred to Vermont from Louisiana.
Öztürk’s attorney Marty Rosenbluth said in a statement Thursday her detention is a “complete violation of due process and the rule of law.”
Lawyers for Öztürk had asked an immigration judge that she be released on bond as her immigration case proceeds. That judge denied her request Wednesday, the same day Öztürk had a hearing, her attorneys said in a statement released Thursday morning.
Her lawyers said the Department of Homeland Security presented one document to support their opposition to Öztürk’s bond request: a one-paragraph State Department memo revoking her student visa. The memo says her visa was revoked following an assessment that she had been involved in associations “‘that may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”
Öztürk’s lawyers said the immigration judge denied bond based on the “untenable conclusion” that she was “both a flight risk and a danger to the community.”
The DHS has defended Öztürk’s treatment. “Being granted a visa to live and study in the United States is a privilege not a right. The State Department makes specific determinations about visa revocations when an individual poses a threat to national security,” a senior DHS offiical said in a statement.
Immigration officials took Öztürk into custody on March 25 when she was returning from an iftar dinner. After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Öztürk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Öztürk is one of several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the U.S. after they were accused of participating in demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians. A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the U.S. can deport Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil.
Öztürk’s lawyers are challenging the legal authority for ICE’s detention. They also have asked U.S. District Judge William Sessions in Vermont, where her detention case was transferred after lawyers first petitioned for her release in Massachusetts, to take jurisdiction of it and release her.
Sessions, who held a hearing Monday, has not ruled yet. He had asked Öztürk’s lawyers if there was any evidence suggesting that she was a member of the organization that was later “temporarily banned,” according to the State Department memo. Her lawyers said there wasn’t.
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