RMEYSA ZTRK, head of the student visa arrested for writing an opinion article, released on bail

Rümeysa Öztürk, head of the student visa at the University of Tufts of Turkey, was discharged on bail and released more than six weeks of detention at a Louisian immigration detention center after the Rubio Secretary of State stripped her of her visa and ordered her to co -authorize a student newspaper.

Judge William Sessions III in the United States District Court, Vermont, ordered Öztürk released on Friday, saying that the Government had not submitted a legitimate case for its detention and that He faced a significant danger of health problems while he was in detention due to his asthma. Öztürk was released from the arrest on Friday night.

“There is no evidence here about motivation [to detain and remove her] In the absence of the consideration of the opinion article, “said Sessions. Adding:” The reason it has been arrested is simple and purely the expression he made in the opinion article in violation of his rights of the first amendment. “

The Öztürk arrest not only infringed for their own rights, but also “relaxes the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country that are not citizens,” said Sessions.

A fifth year doctoral student, Öztürk was taken from the street of Somerville, Massachusetts, by the Civil Immigration officers with masks on March 25, after Rubio described a threat to national security and revoked his student visa. What made her a threat, according to the government, was her Co -authorship of an opinion article that asks the president of TUFTS to support a student vote to disin from Israeli companies in the middle of the Israel War in Gaza.

She was released and allowed to return to Massachusetts to resume her studies in TUFTS while she was still subject to elimination procedures. The sessions denied the government’s request to impose a prohibition of traveling to Öztürk, stating that he did not believe that she was a risk of escape.

“Thank you very much for all support and love,” said Öztürk after his release, according to NBC’s Boston affiliate.

Michael M. Santiago through Getty Images

Öztürk joined the audience of the detention center in Louisiana, where she was retained. It was his first public appearance since he was arrested more than six weeks ago.

She detailed her Ph.D. Working in TUFTS and the community work in which he dedicated himself to other students, as well as with the 12 asthma attacks he suffered since he was arrested. While Dr. Jessica McCannon, a doctor who had examined the condition of Öztürk asthma, testified, Öztürk suffered another asthma attack and had to leave the room.

Öztürk was not in the courtroom in Vermont because the application of immigration and customs had taken it from Massachusetts to a detention center in Vermont and then quickly went to Louisiana in an attempt to place any judicial case in the 5th Circuit courts, which are more hostile to immigrants. On government protests, his challenge to his arrest was granted in Vermont.

The decision, and the marked language of the judge, was the last to cut the efforts of the Trump administration to take energetic measures against the so -called anti -Semitism in the university campuses by revoking the legal status of foreign students who participated in the protests against the Israel War in Gaza or who expressed sympathy with the Palestinians and then placed them in detention.

Öztürk is the second student attacked by the Trump administration to be released from the arrest while his case proceeds.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a student from Columbia University with permanent legal status, was released from the detention in Minnesota after a judge ruled that the case against him was equivalent to a “chilling action of the government aimed at closing the debate.”

Like Öztürk, the graduate of Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident, was taken to Louisiana after Rubio revoked his green card and arrested him in New York. Khalil’s case is now before a judge of the District Court in New Jersey, where he was taken for the first time to stop.

Öztürk will now be free to continue your studies in TUFTS, but remains subject to government elimination. But she can continue fighting that elimination and the revocation of her detention -free student visa.