The Department of Justice filed an “emergency motion” just after 9 p.m. Thursday asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the transfer of Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk from Louisiana to Vermont. It claims that the district court judge, William Sessions III, acted without jurisdiction April 18 when he ordered Öztürk transferred to Vermont by May 1 to prepare for a bail hearing before him on May 9.
The government’s appeal was filed the night of April 22 and the emergency motion followed the night of April 24. It asks the appeals court to rule by April 29 – Tuesday – “ because the district court’s order requires action by May 1.”
In accordance with rules, the government first sought a stay of Sessions’ order from Sessions himself when it filed the appeal. Sessions denied that early afternoon Thursday, saying the government “largely recycles the same arguments that the Court has previously considered and rejected.”
In their opposition to the stay motion filed in the district court Wednesday, Öztürk’s lawyers wrote “only one party – Ms. Öztürk – would suffer any harm from a stay, and that harm is irreparable.”
“By contrast,” they said, “the government suffers no harm at all by holding Ms. Öztürk in detention in Vermont instead of Louisiana and being compelled to justify her continued detention.”
The government has not accused Öztürk of any crime. The sole publicly offered basis for the State Department revoking her student visa is Öztürk’s co-authorship of an essay in The Tufts Daily in 2024. She was taken from a Somerville sidewalk March 25 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and whisked to a detention center in Louisiana.
There is no required timeline for the appeals court to rule, but it has five days to meet the government’s requested timeline.
The district court’s stay denial made clear that Sessions intends to proceed with his original schedule: “The government is now obligated to ensure that Ms. Öztürk is transferred to ICE custody within the District of Vermont no later than May 1.”
“The Court ordered that Ms. Öztürk be returned to Vermont precisely so that the Court could resolve the habeas petition as expeditiously as possible, and the Court intends to do so,” Sessions wrote.
Separately, on Wednesday, Öztürk’s attorneys renewed their request that the district judge order the government to produce memos about Öztürk from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Sessions has not ruled on that request, which was made initially in the middle of a paragraph in a supplementary filing. The government had objected on April 18, saying, among other things, that the memos are subject to “the deliberative process privilege.”
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Ms Ozturk was kidnapped in Massachusetts. I am wondering why the justice department here in the Commonwealth, the Attorney General and governor as well as others have not filed criminal charges on those very people who picked her up off the street? I am also horrified that she has to stay in the detention center in Louisiana especially considering her innocence and her medical condition. I think the Commonwealth must take a very aggressive stand. This kind of waiting around is deadly.