Appeals Court Rules Tufts University Student Arrested by ICE Must Be Returned to Vermont

The student was arrested by plainclothes officers after her visa was revoked.

In this image taken from security camera video, Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Tufts University, is detained by Department of Homeland Security agents on a street in Sommerville, Mass., on March 26, 2025. AP Photo

A federal appeals court ruled on May 7 that a Tufts University student must be returned to Vermont after she had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and sent to Louisiana.

The three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled unanimously to deny the government’s appeal of a lower-court order, and they have directed that the student, Rumeysa Ozturk, be sent back to Vermont by May 14.

“The District of Vermont is likely the proper venue to adjudicate Ozturk’s habeas petition because, at the time she filed, she was physically in Vermont,” the judges said in their written opinion.

Ozturk, a 30-year-old native of Turkey studying in the United States on a student visa, was arrested by masked police officers in plain clothes on the evening of March 25. Her arrest was one of several made by the government as part of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian activity on college campuses, including the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil.

She was detained nearly a year after co-authoring a 2024 op-ed in the Tufts Daily, a university newspaper.

The op-ed called for Tufts to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide ... disclose its investments, and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.”

Her arrest was captured on surveillance video. 

Following the arrest, she was first transported to Methuen, Massachusetts, then to the ICE Field Office in St. Albans, Vermont, that same evening.

At around 10:55 p.m. on the evening of her arrest, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper ordered the government not to relocate Ozturk without notifying the court.

However, she was flown to Louisiana at 4 a.m. and detained there because “there was no available bedspace” for her at a New England immigration facility.

She has been held in custody at an ICE facility in Basile, Louisiana, since that time.

An attorney for the government later testified they were unsure whether the court’s order had been relayed to the relevant authorities before Ozturk was transferred.

Ozturk’s attorneys alleged in a court filing that her visa had been revoked without notifying her.

They also accused the government of attempting to suppress her First Amendment rights and to “chill” the speech of others with similar viewpoints.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on March 27 that Ozturk’s visa had been revoked because she had participated in “movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus.”

“If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States, and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa,” Rubio said.

“And once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States, and we have a right—like every country has a right—to remove you from our country.”

Assistant Homeland Security public affairs Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Epoch Times that student visas and permission to study in the U.S. are “a privilege not a right.”

“Today’s ruling does not prevent the continued detention of Ms. Ozturk,” she said in an emailed statement.

“And we will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.