Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk will not be moved from immigration detention in Louisiana to Vermont for a scheduled hearing May 9, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday in a temporary (“administrative”) stay order.
The appeals court instead set a hearing for May 6 to consider the U.S. government’s emergency request to keep Ozturk in Louisiana longer. The government has a separate, underlying appeal of Vermont judge William Sessions III’s order that not only ordered Ozturk to Vermont but assumed jurisdiction over her case and set schedules. This hearing is not about the underlying appeal.
Sessions ordered Öztürk in Vermont by Thursday for a bail hearing on May 9. That hearing now seems unlikely to occur on that schedule, since it anticipated Öztürk being present in person, and the appeals court would have to rule rather quickly to accomplish that. The appeals court has paused Sessions’ order through its hearing.
The court’s stay is a result of an emergency motion that the government filed Thursday. Öztürk’s lawyers filed an opposition Friday.
In their opposition, Öztürk’s ACLU attorneys argued that Sessions’ order transferring Öztürk was not appealable, because it lacked the practical effect of an injunction with “serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence.”
The government’s emergency motion was silent on why its appeal was allowed under rules that normally prohibit appeals before a case is finished.
“Every day of her detention further accomplishes the unconstitutional object of the government’s actions, confounds the purpose of the Great Writ, and risks undermining the public’s confidence in the executive branch and the ability of the judiciary to hold it accountable for wrongdoing,” Öztürk’s attorneys wrote in their opposition.
Known as The Great Writ, habeas corpus is the legal mechanism for a person to challenge their detention; it requires the government to show that detention is lawful.
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 the detention center in Louisiana.
The appeals court set a further deadline of Thursday for any additional reply from the government to Öztürk’s opposition. That filing would allow the government to explain why its appeal is properly before the appeals court.
Sessions’ order, from April 18, also set a May 22 date for a hearing on the merits of Öztürk’s case, unlike the May 9 hearing that was for her temporary release. It’s not apparent how the delay until May 6 might affect the May 22 hearing.
The composition of the May 6 three-judge panel at the appeals court has not been announced, but the order entering the stay went out below the name of Judge Allison J. Nathan:
The Government has filed an emergency motion seeking a stay pending appeal of the district court’s order dated April 18, 2025, which directs the Government to transfer Appellee Rümeysa Öztürk to immigration custody within the District of Vermont no later than May 1, 2025. The Court understands the emergency nature of the relief requested by the Government as well as Petitioner’s request for a decision as soon as practicable.
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the motion for a stay pending appeal is REFERRED to the three-judge motions panel sitting on Tuesday, May 6, 2025. An administrative stay of the district court’s order to transfer is GRANTED pending decision by the panel. The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the merits of the emergency motion for a stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.
A stronger
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That’s a lot of time for writing an letter to the editor!
So have they gotten her her asthma medication? If Louisiana is as good a place to be in jail as Vermont, maybe it isn’t urgent to get her back, but it sounds like it might not be.