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