Home | News # Öztürk’s case is transferred to Vermont By John Hawkinson Friday, April 4, 2025 via social media Rümeysa Öztürk, a third-year doctoral student at Tufts, is in federal custody. Rümeysa Öztürk’s court case will not stay in Massachusetts, but it will be transferred to Vermont and not to Louisiana, Judge Denise Casper ruled Friday at 2:23 p.m., less than a day after Thursday’s hearing. The ruling is a partial win for Öztürk, the Tufts doctoral student arrested March 25 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement off the street in Somerville in retaliation for a student newspaper piece. Öztürk wanted her case to remain in Massachusetts, where her lawyers and support network are, but absolutely did not want it to go to Louisiana, where the court is remote and the legal precedents are much less favorable for immigration detainees. The 26-page opinion came less than 24 hours after a 67-minute hearing, which Casper limited solely to the question of whether she had jurisdiction over Öztürk’s habeas case, which was filed at 10:01 p.m. in Boston. Federal agents had transported Öztürk from Somerville at 5:49 p.m., going through Methuen (just short of the New Hampshire border) at 6:36 p.m., leaving Lebanon, New Hampshire (just short of the Vermont border) at 9:03 p.m. and arriving at St. Albans, Vermont at 10:28 p.m. > Hello from Remyüsa Öztürk’s habeas petition hearing before Judge Casper in Courtroom 11 at the Moakley Courthouse in Boston. > > Courtroom is full, but the overflow assembly downstairs is not overly so. > > Background thread: bsky.app/profile/john… > > — John Hawkinson (@johnhawkinson.bsky.social) April 3, 2025 at 1:59 PM “The court rightfully, and with appropriate urgency, rejected the Trump administration’s attempted manipulation to move Rümeysa Öztürk’s case to Louisiana. The speed of this ruling speaks volumes, and this decision is a crucial next step,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director at ACLU of Massachusetts. “We are ready to defend Ms. Öztürk’s rights in Vermont to bring her back to her loved ones and life in Somerville.” Adriana Lafaille, the ACLU of Massachusetts lawyer who argued for Öztürk on Thursday, had said an exception to the general rule – that the case must be filed in the district of confinement – should apply, based in part on a concurrence (not a majority opinion) by then-Justice Anthony Kennedy in Rumsfeld v. Padilla, a 2004 Supreme Court case about detaining a so-called “enemy combatant.” But “No court has ‘ever found that [Justice Kennedy’s] exceptions applied’ to the facts of any particular case,” Casper said, quoting a March 19 decision by New York judge Jesse Furman in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student arrested by federal agents and taken to New Jersey overnight while his lawyers filed a habeas petition in New York. The Khalil case and the Öztürk case have a lot of similarities. Furman transferred Khalil’s case to New Jersey, and Casper transferred Öztürk’s case to Vermont. In both cases, government lawyers asked to transfer the case to the Western District of Louisiana and both judges declined to do so. Casper further ordered that the government is still enjoined – prohibited – from transferring Öztürk out of the United States, even while the case is being transferred. The District of Vermont transferred in Öztürk’s case at 3:24 p.m. and has assigned it to Judge William Sessions III, who was appointed to the bench by president Bill Clinton in 1995. At a press conference following Thursday’s hearing, Lafaille said that Öztürk’s immigration court hearing Monday in Louisiana had been canceled without explanation. It is not abundantly clear what the next steps will be. It is likely that Sessions will set a schedule for further proceedings of the case late this week or early next. * * * #### Previous story Federal agents tried to ‘game the system,’ say lawyers for abducted Tufts student (updated) April 2, 2025 Somerville, Tufts University, court, politics