Trump team ordered to move Tufts student from Louisiana ICE jail after it couldn't ‘take a position' on her free speech
The case of Ozturk, a Turkish international student and former Fulbright scholar working towards her doctorate in child development, is among several high-profile cases at the center of the Trump administration's targeting of international students for their advocacy for Palestine during Israel's war in Gaza.
In March, Ozturk's visa was revoked and she was arrested and detained by plain-clothes federal agents outside her apartment in Massachusetts in what her lawyers argue is a retaliatory attempt to deport her over an op-ed she wrote in a student newspaper.
The government has one week to transfer her, according to Wednesday's order, which arrived less than 24 hours after a hearing in which government attorneys failed to say whether they even agree with the administration's position that her pro-Palestine speech is not constitutionally protected.
Appellate Judge Barrington Parker, who was appointed by George W. Bush, pressed Department of Justice attorney Drew Ensign on whether Ozturk's statements — and statements from another international student who was arrested for support for Palestine — amount to protected speech.
'Your honor, we haven't taken a position on that,' Ensign replied.
'Help my thinking. Take a position,' Parked fired back.
'I don't have authority to take a position,' Ensign said.
Ozturk has been locked up in a rural Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana for more than 100 days. In sworn statements in court documents, she reported experiencing several asthma attacks and sharing a cell with more than 20 others in cramped and unsanitary conditions.
Her detention is 'unprecedented and shocking,' according to Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the ACLU 's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
'She has been held behind bars for six weeks while her health deteriorates for writing an op-ed,' she told a three-judge appeals court panel Wednesday. 'Detention is not the norm with respect to visa revocation, as we had here. The executive branch made a specific decision to detain Ms. Ozturk that was motivated by her speech.'
Last month, Vermont District Judge William K. Session ordered Ozturk's transfer to a detention center in the state, noting that her case has 'raised significant constitutional concerns with her arrest and detention which merit full and fair consideration in this forum.'
The Trump administration appealed the order, arguing that Ozturk can be deported under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked against dozens of international students who he claims have 'adverse' impacts to the country's foreign policy.
But the administration does not appear to possess any evidence backing up claims of antisemitism and support for a terrorist organization to justify her arrest, according to court filings and government memos.
'No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views,' Bhandari said in a statement Wednesday. 'Every day that RRumeysa Ozturk remains in detention is a day too long. We're grateful the court refused the government's attempt to keep her isolated from her community and her legal counsel as she pursues her case for release.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
22 minutes ago
- Sky News
One year ago, a furious mob rioted in Rotherham. Locals fear another outbreak of violence
A year has passed, but Paris and Josh still cannot quite believe what they witnessed last August. They live 200m from a hotel on the edge of a quiet residential street. "It looked like a modern-day lynching," Paris says. It's the only way she can describe the sickening scene that unfolded as a furious mob tried to attack asylum seekers being housed in the Holiday Inn Express north of Rotherham. 1:40 After seeing masked men setting fires and storming into the hotel, Paris says she was afraid they were going to see "either someone getting thrown out a window, or someone getting dragged outside". Josh remembers looking out of his bedroom window and thinking: "What is England coming to? What is going on?" "It was like they were going to a festival," Paris says. "They had ski masks on and bags full of alcohol, people were taking the kids, like they had the kids on their shoulders." To protect their car, Josh drove it off his driveway to another street nearby. They then retreated inside and watched six or seven hours of chaos unfold. It was one of the most serious outbursts of rioting during a week last August when disorder spread through towns and cities. Days after the knife attack which left three school girls dead in Southport, years of deep-rooted frustration about immigration boiled over. Twelve months on, the Holiday Inn Express next to Josh and Paris' home has reopened as a regular hotel, but the tension that has been seen around other migrant hotels recently hasn't disappeared. "I still see in groups (online) all this hate being spilled," Josh says. "I think it probably could happen again," Paris adds. "That's the faith I have in the country, really." The courts have handed out lengthy prison sentences to those involved in the disorder, leading to rows about whether they match the crimes people committed. The mayor of South Yorkshire says tensions over immigration remain unresolved and told Sky News he believes migrants, hotel workers or police officers could have been killed last August. "Had they [rioters] been more effective at doing some of the things they were trying to do, we would have seen people dying on the day," Oliver Coppard says. "What it speaks to, in my mind, is the poverty that we see in some of our communities, which feeds a sense of grievance." Mr Coppard - who has responsibility for policing in South Yorkshire - added: "Ultimately what we need in this country is a better approach to cohesion, to community integration so people are supported to live full lives within our communities and a proper and legal approach to asylum. "Those things are incredibly toxic and politics is not doing a good job I think of dealing with those issues." Protests around other migrant hotels in recent weeks show that the grievances of last summer still hang in the air. In Rotherham market we meet 23-year-old scaffolder Josh. "I don't think it has been solved," he says. When I asked him how that makes people feel, he replies: "Angry because it makes people want to riot again." He says he has no issue with people who move to the UK legally to work, but adds it is "unfair" when people arrive on small boats and receive hotel accommodation while their asylum cases are processed. Gabriel, 38, who was born in Rotherham, says he feels people look at him differently since last summer's disorder. "I couldn't see anybody smiling at me like they used to before the riot, they are putting every minority in the same box which is wrong," he says. "There is still a bit of aftermath, anger, rage, upset - in everybody's eyes. "That tension alone is worse than the actual incident because before, I think, it was hidden but now it is out there." A woman who didn't want to be named says: "The backlash is going to happen with the government against the people - the people against the government, it is not right. "The way I see it, we all have to live together ... we bleed the same blood, we breathe the same air." That spirit of conciliation and tolerance is less common than it once was - it is a hallmark of a failed immigration system that has left deep-rooted frustration in communities across the UK.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
‘Revolving door' between ICE and private prison companies is boosting Trump's deportation plans
As the Trump administration bulks up its mass deportation machine, officials have relied on a network of for-profit prison companies that run the overwhelming majority of America's immigration detention centers. One of the officials overseeing those contracts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the government's Department of Homeland Security, is a former executive from a top private prison firm, GEO Group, which manages 20 detention centers across the country. According to The Washington Post, Trump's border czar Tom Homan approached David Venturella for a role in the administration, despite federal ethics rules that largely prohibit government employees from working on contracts with their former employers. Instead, Venturella was hired by the Department of Homeland Security as a full-time adviser and was granted a waiver from those ethics rules, according to the newspaper. Doing so has kept him out of the public eye and away from potentially contentious Senate confirmation hearings, the newspaper noted. Venturella worked as an assistant director at ICE before he was recruited by GEO Group in 2012. He left the company in 2023 though he stayed on as a paid consultant through January 31, according to company filings reviewed by The Washington Post. This apparent revolving door has also swung in the other direction. Days before the 2024 election, a top official at ICE left his position to take a senior role at GEO. Daniel Bible, who worked for ICE for nearly 15 years, is now a senior vice president at the company. At least six former ICE officials who left government work over the past decade now work in top roles at the company, according to reporting from nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. The group found a 'long tradition of ICE officials departing to work for the agency's top contractor,' part of the so-called 'revolving door' between the federal government and the private sector. The Independent has requested comment from ICE and GEO. In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesperson for ICE said Venturella has divested his GEO stocks and holdings and 'has no financial ties to the company.' The spokesperson said he 'has no role in reviewing, approving, or recommending contracts,' but declined to comment on why he was given a waiver that authorizes him to work on Geo matters, according to the newspaper. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the newspaper that Homan adheres to 'the highest ethical standards and he had no knowledge of any potential conflicts' involving Venturella. GEO runs 100 facilities globally, with a capacity of approximately 81,000 beds across those facilities, according to documents obtained by the ACLU. More than 22,000 beds – more than a quarter of GEO's global capacity – are inside ICE detention centers in the United States, including California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Nearly 90 percent of all immigration detention systems are operated by private prison contractors. More than 56,000 people are currently in ICE detention — likely a record in modern history. The figures top both the 39,000 people held in the final days of Joe Biden's administration, and the previous recent record of 55,654 in August 2019 during the first Trump administration. Since January, ICE has awarded GEO new and modified contracts expected to increase the agency's bed space to keep up with the administration's anti-immigration agenda, which the president and Congress have boosted by tens of billions of dollars over the next decade. With a directive from the White House to make at least 3,000 daily arrests, ICE received record-breaking funding from Congress — expanding the agency's budget to be larger than most countries' militaries — to hire more officers and expand detention space. That surge in congressional funding could land private contractors lucrative deals to detain more immigrants. Earlier this year, GEO inked a 15-year contract with ICE worth $60 million a year, the company announced. According to the Federal Procurement Data System, the contract is worth a total of $1.2 billion.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
US Supreme Court poised to assess validity of key voting rights law
WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court signaled on Friday that it will assess the legality of a key component of a landmark federal voting rights law, potentially giving its conservative majority a chance to gut a provision enacted 60 years ago that was intended to prevent racial discrimination in voting. The brief order issued by the court raises the stakes in a case already pending before the justices involving a legal challenge to an electoral map passed by Louisiana's Republican-led legislature that raised the number of Black-majority U.S. congressional districts in the state from one to two. The justices said they will consider whether it violates the U.S. Constitution for states to create additional voting districts with populations that are majority Black, Hispanic or another minority as a way to remedy a judicial finding that a state's voting map likely violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The case, due to be heard by the justices in their next term that begins in October, sets the stage for a major ruling expected by the end of June 2026 that could affect the composition of electoral districts around the United States. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. The dispute strikes at tensions between the Voting Rights Act, passed by Congress during the U.S. civil rights era to bar racial discrimination in voting, and adhering to the constitutional principle of equal protection, which limits the application of race when the borders of electoral districts are redrawn. Boundaries of legislative districts across the country are reconfigured to reflect population changes every decade in a process called redistricting. The court previously heard arguments in the case in March. But in June, the justices declined to issue a ruling and indicated they would invite the parties to address additional questions. Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, called the stakes enormous, writing in a blog post that the court seems to be asking whether the section of the Voting Rights Act at issue "violates a colorblind understanding of the Constitution." The action follows a major ruling by the court in 2013 in a case involving Alabama's Shelby County that invalidated another core section of the Voting Rights Act that determined which states and locales with a history of racial discrimination need federal approval for voting rule changes affecting Black people and other minorities. "This Court is more conservative than the Court that in 2013 struck down the other main pillar of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case," Hasen wrote. "This is a big, and dangerous, step toward knocking down the second pillar." The matter is being litigated at the Supreme Court at a time when Republican President Donald Trump is taking steps to eliminate programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion that aim to promote opportunities for minorities, women, LGBT people and others. In the Louisiana case, state officials and civil rights groups appealed a lower court's ruling that found the map laying out the state's six U.S. House of Representatives districts - with two Black-majority districts, up from one previously - violated the constitutional promise of equal protection. A group of 12 Louisiana voters identifying themselves in court papers as "non-African American" sued to block the redrawn map. A lawyer for the plaintiffs did not respond to requests to provide the racial breakdown of the plaintiffs. The state and the rights groups are seeking to preserve the map. Black people comprise nearly a third of Louisiana's population. During the first round of arguments in the case in March, lawyers for Louisiana argued that the map was not drawn impermissibly by the legislature with race as the primary motivation, as the lower court found last year. The map's design, the Republican-governed state argued, also sought to protect Republican incumbents including House Speaker Mike Johnson and No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise, who both represent districts in the state. Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates. Arguments in the case centered on Louisiana's response to U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick's June 2022 finding that an earlier map likely violated the Voting Rights Act and whether the state relied too heavily on race in devising the remedial map. Dick ruled that a map adopted earlier that year by the legislature that had contained only one Black-majority district unlawfully harmed Black voters. Dick ordered the addition of a second Black-majority district. The Supreme Court in 2023 left Dick's ruling in place, and it previously allowed the map at issue in the current case to be used in the 2024 election. A three-judge panel in a 2-1 ruling in April 2024 found that the map relied too heavily on race in the map's design in violation of the equal protection provision. The Constitution's 14th Amendment contains the equal protection language. Ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the American Civil War, the amendment addressed issues relating to the rights of formerly enslaved Black people.
