Judge Rejects ICE’s Venue Change in Case of Detained Tufts Student

Rumesya Ozturk, a Turkish national and doctoral student, is among several international students facing deportation because of their pro-Palestinian activism.

This contributed photo shows Rumeysa Ozturk on an apple-picking trip in 2021. AP Photo

A federal judge on April 4 allowed the case of a detained Tufts University student to proceed in Vermont, denying the government’s request to transfer the case to Louisiana, where the student is currently held.

Rumesya Ozturk, a Turkish national and doctoral student, was detained by immigration officials near her home in Somerville, a suburb of Boston, on March 25. Court documents show that she was transported to New Hampshire and then Vermont within hours of her apprehension, before being flown the next day to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Louisiana.

Ozturk is among several international students facing deportation because of their participation in pro-Palestinian activism, as President Donald Trump moves to fulfill his pledge to revoke student visas of those accused of sympathizing with foreign terrorists.

In those cases, the Trump administration has invoked the same provision of immigration law that allows for the deportation of foreign nationals if the secretary of state has good reason to believe that their presence or activities in the United States pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” to the country.

On the day Ozturk was taken into custody, her attorneys filed a petition at a federal court in Boston seeking her immediate release. The government argued that the petition was invalid because ICE had already transported Ozturk to Vermont before a judge—unaware of her relocation—issued an order that evening against her removal from Massachusetts without proper notice.

Mark Sauter, representing the Trump administration, further argued that the petition was void because it incorrectly named Patricia Hyde, the acting director of ICE’s Boston field office, as Ozturk’s “immediate custodian.” According to Sauter, the proper respondent should have been an ICE officer overseeing her detention in Vermont.

Sauter also said that the Massachusetts court lacked jurisdiction to review the case and to order the requested relief. He urged the court, if it chose not to dismiss the petition, to transfer the case to the Western District of Louisiana, where Ozturk is currently detained.

Judge Denise Casper of the District of Massachusetts disagreed. In the April 4 order, she ruled that Ozturk’s attorneys should not be faulted for filing the petition in Massachusetts, given that it was impossible for their client to inform them of her whereabouts until she arrived in Louisiana.

“The irregularity of the arrest, detention and processing here is coupled with the failure to disclose Ozturk’s whereabouts even after the government was aware that she had counsel and the Petition was filed in this Court,” the judge wrote.

Casper ultimately determined that the District of Vermont is the proper venue for the case, as Ozturk was held there overnight when the petition was filed. She cited a federal law that permits a case that was filed in the wrong venue to be transferred to a district where it could have originally been brought if doing so serves “the interest of justice.”

“To ensure that Ozturk has an opportunity to have the Petition considered by the District of Vermont, and to preserve the status quo, this Court’s March 28, 2025 Order enjoining the government from removing her from the United States ... shall remain in effect unless and until the transferee court orders otherwise,” her order read.

Ozturk’s attorney, Mahsa Khanbaba, said in a statement that they welcomed the decision.

“Let’s be clear: Rumeysa should never have been arrested or detained by ICE in the first place,” Khanbaba said. “What matters most right now is our continued fight to ensure her immediate release and safe return home.”

Ozturk’s case unfolds amid a broader wave of efforts by the Trump administration to deport foreign students involved in protests of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which was a retaliation for the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that left about 1,200 people dead and more than 200 kidnapped. Hamas is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

A year before her detention, Ozturk was listed as a co-author of a student newspaper article that urged the university to cut financial ties with Israel.

The article, published in the Tufts Daily, criticized university administrators for what it described as a “dismissive” response to the student government’s resolutions. These resolutions called on the university to acknowledge the “Palestinian genocide” and cut ties with companies that directly or indirectly do business with Israel.

In the piece, Ozturk and her co-authors described the resolutions as a “sincere effort to hold Israel accountable” for what they characterized as “indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians.”

It’s not immediately clear whether she had engaged in forms of pro-Palestinian activism beyond this op-ed.