A federal appeals court filed an emergency motion on Monday, pausing the transfer of detained Tufts University student Rumyesa Ozturk from Louisiana to Vermont until a review by a judicial panel in May.
Ozturk was supposed to be returned no later than May 1 for a detention hearing.
However, the decision on whether or not she will remain in Louisiana will now be decided on Tuesday, May 6, by a three-panel judge.
In an arrest caught on camera, Ozturk was surrounded by a group of masked federal agents in plain clothes as she walked along a street near her off-campus apartment on March 25.
Ozturk, a PhD student in Tufts’ Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was handcuffed and quickly whisked away.
In a little over 24 hours, she was transported from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to Vermont, then down to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana, where she’s been jailed for about a month.
Federal authorities have alleged that Ozturk engaged in activities supporting the terrorist group Hamas and revoked her visa.
Ozturk’s lawyer Marty Rosenbluth argued that she hasn’t been accused of any crime and that the Trump administration targeted her for arrest, detention, and deportation in retaliation for an op-ed she co-authored in her student newspaper.
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