A federal appeals court has ordered President Donald Trump's administration to transfer a Tufts University student from a Louisiana immigration detention facility to Vermont so a judge can decide whether to release her on bail.
The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected the administration's request to pause a judge's order requiring it to transfer Rumeysa Ozturk to Vermont and directed the government to move her within a week.
The 2nd Circuit's ruling left unclear whether a previously scheduled hearing for Friday before U.S. District Judge William Sessions in Burlington to determine whether Ozturk should be released on bail would move forward. The administration could also potentially ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
Sessions on April 18 had ordered Ozturk to be transferred to Vermont, saying her case "raised significant constitutional concerns with her arrest and detention which merit full and fair consideration."
Ozturk, a doctoral student from Turkey with a valid visa, has written about the "inhumane" and "unsafe" conditions in the Louisiana detention center where she has been held since her March 25 arrest.
The judge said evidence supported her claim that she was detained merely to punish her for co-authoring an opinion piece last year in the Tufts student newspaper, criticizing the university's response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide."
The Trump administration appealed, arguing that Sessions lacked the authority to order her transfer under federal immigration law and that the case did not belong in Vermont at all, now that Ozturk was detained in Louisiana.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston)