Rumeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student detained by immigration agents in March, was ordered to be released from ICE custody following a hearing Friday.
“Ozturk is free to return to her home in Massachusetts. She’s also free to travel to Massachusetts and Vermont as she sees fit, and I am not going to put a travel restriction on her, because, frankly, I don’t find that she poses any risk of flight,” the judge said.
The government was ordered to release her from custody immediately, pending further proceedings in this court on the merits of her habeas petition, the judge said.
Before the judge ordered her free, Öztürk, who appeared remotely from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, had an asthma attack. She had testified that the frequency, length, and intensity of her asthma attacks have increased since her detainment.
She told the judge that it has been negatively affecting her.
The doctoral student from Turkey had previously detailed her attacks in a declaration filed with the court. Attorney Jessie Rossman, who appeared in person for the hearing in Vermont, told the judge that her client has had more attacks beyond the eight documented in the declaration.
“She has been detained, experienced numerous asthma attacks, all because she wrote an op-ed,” Rossman said, who asked that the court immediately grant bail.
During her testimony, Öztürk said that she was diagnosed with asthma in 2023 in her hometown in Turkey and had experienced attacks before her detainment.
During an episode, she said she experiences anxiety, exhaustion, chest tightness, and coughing. They are usually brought on by environmental triggers as well as stress.
Tufts University medical center has helped her maintain her asthma, she said, noting that she has two inhalers, one for daily maintenance and another she uses when she has an attack.
Öztürk appeared to get upset as she testified about an attack at the Atlanta airport after she was detained on the streets of a Boston suburb on March 25. She was seen putting her hands over her chest and taking a deep breath.
“I was afraid, and I was crying,” she told the court about the Atlanta incident.
After her testimony, Dr. Jessica McCannon, who has expertise in treating asthma, was called to the stand. While McCannon was speaking, Öztürk began coughing uncontrollably and appeared out of breath. Attorney Mahsa Khanbabai, who was with Öztürk, said her client was having an asthma attack.
Öztürk rushed out of the room to get her inhaler.
The Trump administration revoked Öztürk’s student visa in late March based on an assessment from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement that she “had been involved in associations that ‘may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization.'”
It included her co-authoring an op-ed “that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus, the Bureau of Consular Affairs approved revocation, effectively immediately,” according to a State Department memo.
Öztürk wrote an op-ed last year in her student newspaper that was critical of Tufts’ response to the war in Gaza.