The administration of President Donald Trump has continued to face setbacks in its attempts to deport pro-Palestinian student protesters, as courts probe whether the students’ rights have been violated.
On Wednesday, separate courts issued orders related to two of the most high-profile cases: that of Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk.
In New York, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish student from Tufts University, be moved to Vermont no later than May 14.
That ruling marked a rejection of a Trump administration appeal to delay the transfer and keep Ozturk in Louisiana, where she has been held in an immigration detention centre since late March.
“We’re grateful the court refused the government’s attempt to keep her isolated from her community and her legal counsel as she pursues her case for release,” said Esha Bhandari, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Ozturk.
Separately, in Newark, New Jersey, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to deliver specifics about its rationale for describing Khalil, a leader in Columbia University’s student protests, as a threat to US foreign policy.
Inside Ozturk’s case
The latest ruling in Ozturk’s case highlighted a practice that has become common under the Trump administration: Many foreign students involved in the pro-Palestinian protest movement have been transferred to detention centres far from their homes.
Ozturk’s ordeal began on March 25, when six plain-clothed police officers arrested her outside her home in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, where she went to school.
Supporters believe Ozturk, a PhD student and Fulbright scholar from Turkiye, was targeted for having co-written an opinion article in her student newspaper, calling on Tufts University to acknowledge Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide.
The US is a longtime ally of Israel and has supported its military campaign in Gaza. The Trump administration has accused Ozturk of having “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans”, though it has not offered evidence.
After she was detained outside her home, Ozturk was reportedly whisked across state borders, first to Vermont and later to Louisiana, all within a 24-hour period, according to her lawyers.
Critics have described those rapid transfers as a means of subverting due process, separating foreign students from family, friends and legal resources they can otherwise draw upon.
In Ozturk’s case, the confusion led her lawyers to file a petition for her release in Massachusetts, as they did not know where she was when they submitted the paperwork.
On April 18, a lower court ruled that Ozturk must be returned to Vermont no later than May 1, as it weighed her habeas petition: a type of complaint that challenges the legality of one’s detention.
“No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views. Every day that Rumeysa Ozturk remains in detention is a day too long,” Bhandari, her lawyer, said in a statement.
But the Trump administration appealed, seeking an emergency stay of Ozturk’s transfer to Vermont.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected (PDF) that request, however. It said the government had failed to show any “irreparable harm” that Ozturk’s transfer would cause.
“Faced with such a conflict between the government’s unspecific financial and administrative concerns on the one hand, and the risk of substantial constitutional harm to Ozturk on the other, we have little difficulty concluding ‘that the balance of hardships tips decidedly’ in her favor,” the court wrote.
Though Ozturk is expected to be transferred to Vermont, where her habeas petition will be heard, the Trump administration is slated to continue with deportation proceedings in Louisiana.
The appeals court, however, explained that this should be no challenge for the Trump administration, given that Ozturk can appear through video conference for those hearings.
“The government asserts that it would face difficulties in arranging for Ozturk to appear for her immigration proceedings in Louisiana remotely,” the court wrote. “But the government has not disputed that it is legally and practically possible for Ozturk to attend removal proceedings remotely.”
The Trump administration has the option of appealing the decision to the Supreme Court.
Inside Khalil’s case
Likewise, Khalil faces deportation proceedings in Louisiana while his habeas petition is heard in New Jersey, closer to his home in New York City.
On March 8, he became the first high-profile case of a student protester being arrested for deportation. Agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived at his student housing building at Columbia University, where his wife, a US citizen, filmed him being handcuffed and led away.
Khalil himself was a US permanent resident who recently graduated from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is of Palestinian descent.
On Tuesday, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in New Jersey rejected a bid by the Trump administration to transfer Khalil’s habeas petition to Louisiana.
And on Wednesday, US District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz ordered the Trump administration to provide a specific assessment of the risks Khalil poses by being in the US.
Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cited Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to justify Khalil’s detention and deportation. A rarely used provision of the law allows secretaries of state to remove noncitizens who could cause “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences”.
But Rubio has so far been vague about what those consequences might be in Khalil’s case. The student protest leader has been charged with no crime.
Judge Farbiarz also required the Trump team to supply a catalogue of every case in which US officials have employed that law. The Trump administration is expected to appeal that judge’s order as well.