ordered<\/a> her immediate release\u00a0after finding she raised a substantial claim that her detention constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of her free speech rights.<\/p>\nOzturk, who spent 45 days in a detention centre in southern Louisiana, has been back on the Tufts campus since.<\/p>\n
The federal government appealed her release to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n
The January 29 decision, however, ends those proceedings for now.<\/p>\n
Ozturk said it was heartening to know that some justice can prevail.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system\u2019s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the US government,\u201d she said in a statement released by her lawyers.<\/p>\n
Ozturk\u2019s immigration lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, said the decision was issued by Immigration Judge Roopal Patel in Boston.<\/p>\n
Patel\u2019s decision is not itself public, and the Trump administration could challenge it \u200cbefore the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the US Department of Justice.<\/p>\n
Khanbabai hailed Patel\u2019s decision, while slamming what she called the Trump administration\u2019s weaponisation of the US immigration system to target \u201cvalued members of our society\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has manipulated immigration laws to silence people who advocate for Palestinian human rights and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza,\u201d she said. \u201cWith this ruling, Judge Patel has delivered justice for Rumeysa; now, I hope that other immigration judges will follow her lead and decline to rubber-stamp the president\u2019s cruel deportation agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement that Judge Patel\u2019s\u00a0decision reflected \u201cjudicial activism\u201d.<\/p>\n
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem \u201chas made it clear that anyone who thinks they can \u200ccome to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism \u2013 think again\u201d.<\/p>\n
The video of Ozturk\u2019s arrest in the Boston suburb of Somerville was widely shared, turning her case into one of the highest-profile instances of the effort by Trump\u2019s administration to deport non-citizen students with pro-Palestinian views.<\/p>\n
Separately, a federal judge in Boston last month ruled<\/a> that Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had adopted an unlawful policy of detaining and deporting scholars like Ozturk that chilled the free speech of non-citizen academics at universities.<\/p>\nThe Justice Department on Monday moved to appeal that decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers say immigration judge found that the Department of Homeland Security failed to prove the Tufts student should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,2563,3,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-459773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-israel-palestine-conflict","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-united-states-of-america","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-us-canada","17":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}