Attorneys say immigration decide discovered that the Division of Homeland Safety didn’t show the Tufts scholar must be faraway from the US.
A decide in the US has blocked the deportation of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Tufts College scholar who was arrested final 12 months as a part of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists, in keeping with her legal professionals.
Ozturk’s legal professionals detailed the choice in a letter filed on the 2nd US Circuit Court docket of Appeals on Monday.
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They mentioned the immigration decide concluded on January 29 that the US Division of Homeland Safety had not met its burden of proving she was detachable and terminated the proceedings towards her.
Ozturk, a PhD scholar finding out youngsters’s relationship to social media, was arrested final March whereas strolling down a road because the administration of US President Donald Trump started focusing on foreign-born college students and activists concerned in pro-Palestinian advocacy.
Video confirmed masked brokers handcuffing her and placing her into an unmarked automobile.
The only foundation authorities offered for revoking her visa was an editorial she co-authored in Tufts’ scholar newspaper a 12 months earlier, criticising her college’s response to Israel’s genocidal struggle on Gaza.
A petition to launch her was first filed in federal courtroom in Boston, the place Tufts is situated, after which moved to the town of Burlington in Vermont. In Could of final 12 months, a federal decide ordered her speedy launch after discovering she raised a considerable declare that her detention constituted illegal retaliation in violation of her free speech rights.
Ozturk, who spent 45 days in a detention centre in southern Louisiana, has been again on the Tufts campus since.
The federal authorities appealed her launch to the 2nd US Circuit Court docket of Appeals.
The January 29 choice, nevertheless, ends these proceedings for now.
Ozturk mentioned it was heartening to know that some justice can prevail.
“As we speak, I breathe a sigh of reduction figuring out that regardless of the justice system’s flaws, my case might give hope to those that have additionally been wronged by the US authorities,” she mentioned in an announcement launched by her legal professionals.
Ozturk’s immigration lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, mentioned the choice was issued by Immigration Choose Roopal Patel in Boston.
Patel’s choice is just not itself public, and the Trump administration might problem it earlier than the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is a part of the US Division of Justice.
Khanbabai hailed Patel’s choice, whereas slamming what she known as the Trump administration’s weaponisation of the US immigration system to focus on “valued members of our society”.
“It has manipulated immigration legal guidelines to silence individuals who advocate for Palestinian human rights and the continued humanitarian disaster in Gaza,” she mentioned. “With this ruling, Choose Patel has delivered justice for Rumeysa; now, I hope that different immigration judges will comply with her lead and decline to rubber-stamp the president’s merciless deportation agenda.”
The Division of Homeland Safety, which oversees US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, mentioned in an announcement that Choose Patel’s choice mirrored “judicial activism”.
Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem “has made it clear that anybody who thinks they’ll come to America and conceal behind the First Modification to advocate for anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism – suppose once more”.
The video of Ozturk’s arrest within the Boston suburb of Somerville was extensively shared, turning her case into one of many highest-profile cases of the trouble by Trump’s administration to deport non-citizen college students with pro-Palestinian views.
Individually, a federal decide in Boston final month ruled that Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had adopted an illegal coverage of detaining and deporting students like Ozturk that chilled the free speech of non-citizen teachers at universities.
The Justice Division on Monday moved to enchantment that call.
