Detained Student's Legal Battle Continues in Appeals Court

(MENAFN) The attorneys representing Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student currently held by immigration officials, plan to appeal to a higher court on Tuesday in an effort to avoid delays in her relocation to Vermont.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan is scheduled to review whether a lower court's directive to move Ozturk should be executed promptly or postponed further.

Ozturk, who is pursuing a Ph.D. at Tufts University, was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 25 in Massachusetts.

Her arrest followed her involvement in co-writing an op-ed regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was published in the university's student-run newspaper the previous year.

After being detained, Ozturk was transferred across several states before ultimately being flown to a detention center in Louisiana.

In early April, a federal judge in Massachusetts decided that the legal challenge regarding her detention by ICE should be pursued in Vermont rather than Louisiana.

A judge in Vermont later affirmed this decision and issued an order requiring ICE to return her to a Vermont-based detention facility no later than May 1.

However, on April 24, the U.S. government filed an appeal.

Without addressing the case's core legal questions, the appeals court recently agreed to hear arguments from both the government—which seeks to keep her in Louisiana—and Ozturk’s defense team, which strongly objects to this request.

Her lawyers have described her living conditions in Louisiana as harsh, stating that since her arrival, she has been confined in a "cramped room with poor ventilation" along with 23 other women for nearly the entire day.

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