Judge orders immediate release of Tufts University student from ICE custody - MSNBC Reports

[orleans]

2. follow up

Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk thanks supporters after release from Louisiana detention facility

BURLINGTON, Vt. — She appeared on screen in orange prison garb, beamed in remotely Friday morning from a stark room in a detention facility in Louisiana. She had a coughing fit halfway through, the latest of many asthma attacks in the six weeks since Rümeysa Öztürk was snatched off a sidewalk in Somerville by immigration agents and held for deportation.

And then, Friday night, she walked out of the front gate of the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, free to return to her life as a PhD candidate at Tufts while she fights to remain in the country.

“Thank you so much for being here,” Öztürk told a group of a dozen supporters who had waited for more than eight hours to see her walk free. Öztürk wore a light pink blouse, and had a constant, soft smile spread across her face. “I really appreciate you being here, and thanks so much for all the support and love.”

Earlier that day, a federal district judge conducting the hearing 1,500 miles from Öztürk’s imprisonment ruled she must be released immediately and allowed to return to Massachusetts, where she’s spent years as a student.

“Her continued detention cannot stand,” US District Judge William K. Sessions III said from the bench in the Vermont courtroom. “Her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”

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from the boston globe
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/05/09/metro/rumeysa-ozturk-bail-hearing/

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