A U.S. immigration court has terminated the Trump administration’s attempt to deport a Tufts University student and pro-Palestinian activist who has been critical of Israel, her lawyers said Monday.
The court terminated the government’s removal proceedings on Jan. 29, finding that the government has not met its burden in proving that Rümeysa Öztürk, a Ph.D. student from Turkey studying children’s relationship to social media, should be deported, the lawyers said.
The termination was noted Monday in a filing on behalf of Öztürk with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, where she is challenging her arrest and detention.
“Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. government,” Öztürk said in a statement Monday. “Though the pain that I and thousands of other women wrongfully imprisoned by ICE have faced cannot be undone, it is heartening to know that some justice can prevail after all.”
Immigration officers detained Öztürk in March, and a federal judge ordered her release in May, pending proceedings on the merits of her habeas corpus petition. Terminating removal proceedings “does not moot her habeas case,” her lawyers wrote.
Her legal team’s filing says the immigration court in question denied a key argument the Trump administration used to upend the immigration status of multiple students and campus activists critical of Israel amid its war with Hamas militants in Gaza.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson characterized the immigration court decision as “judicial activism” and called Öztürk a “terrorist sympathizer.”
“Visas provided to foreign students to live, study, and work, in the United States are a privilege, not a right — no matter what this or any other activist judicial ruling says,” the spokesperson said in a statement Monday. “And when you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”
Immigration court proceedings are generally not public, and the decision ruling that Öztürk cannot be deported was filed under seal, her lawyers said in their filing. They offered to provide a copy to the appeals court under seal.
Öztürk was arrested March 25 in Somerville, Massachusetts. In supporting her release from an immigrant detention facility, Tufts said in April that Öztürk had co-authored an opinion piece in the student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to the war in Gaza and demanding it divest from ties to Israel.
The Trump administration cited a rarely used provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that allows the secretary of state to deport noncitizens if it is determined their presence would result in “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
In their filing Monday, Öztürk’s lawyers, including counsel from the ACLU of Massachusetts, highlighted what they called the “dangers” of the government’s interpretation of the act.
“Under the government’s view,” they wrote, “it could punitively detain any noncitizen in retaliation for her speech for many months, so long as it simultaneously institutes removal proceedings—no matter how unmeritorious—all without any federal court review of the lawfulness of detention at any time.”
Defense team member Mahsa Khanbabai said in a statement Monday that the Trump administration “has manipulated immigration laws to silence people who advocate for Palestinian human rights and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
Khanbabai added: “I hope that other immigration judges will follow her lead and decline to rubber stamp the president’s cruel deportation agenda.”
