Judge rejects Trump administration effort to deport pro-Palestinian Tufts student

An immigration judge has rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University PhD student, who was arrested last year as part of its targeting of pro-Palestinian campus activists, her lawyers said on Monday.

Lawyers for the Turkish student detailed the immigration judge’s decision in a filing with the New York-based second US circuit court of appeals, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to her release from immigration custody in May.

An immigration judge on 29 January concluded the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had not met its burden of proving she was removable and terminated the proceedings against her, her lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union wrote.

Her immigration lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, said the decision was issued by immigration judge Roopal Patel in Boston.

That ended, for now, proceedings that began with Öztürk’s arrest by immigration authorities in March on a street in Massachusetts after DHS revoked her student visa.

The sole basis authorities provided for revoking her visa was an editorial she co-authored in Tufts’ student newspaper a year earlier criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

“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 US government,” Öztürk said in a statement.

The immigration judge’s decision is not itself public, and the administration could challenge it before the board of immigration appeals, which is part of the US Department of Justice.

DHS, which oversees US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did not respond to a request for comment.

The arrest of Öztürk, a child development researcher, in the Boston suburb of Somerville, was captured in a viral video that shocked many and drew criticism from civil rights groups.

The former Fulbright scholar was held for 45 days in a detention facility in Louisiana until a federal judge in Vermont, where she had briefly been held, ordered her immediately released after finding she raised a substantial claim that her detention constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of her free speech rights.