An American federal judge ordered the immediate liberation of a Turkish student on Friday arrested in March by the immigration police, which has become a symbol of the will of the Trump administration to muzzle the solidarity movement with the Gaza Palestinians in front of Israel.
• Read also: American police accused of having “kidnapped” a Turkish student
The video of the arrest on March 25 of Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student from the Toft University in Massachusetts, by in civilian agents of immigration services (ICE), masked faces and for certain caps on the head, with a view to his expulsion, had aroused indignation.
A federal judge of the neighboring state of Vermont, in the northeast of the United States, ordered on Friday “the government to release it immediately”.
The only reason invoked by the Trump administration to justify the expulsion of Rumeysa Ozturk is an article that she had co -signed in March 2024 in her university newspaper, the toffs Daily, criticizing the way in which his establishment managed the protest movement against the war waged by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
The executive has since largely had the opportunity to present other elements, but did not do so, recalled judge William Sessions after a hearing in which she participated in videoconference of a detention center managed by Ice in Louisiana (South) where she has been incarcerated for more than six weeks.
“At the same time, the extension of his detention censures the freedom of expression of millions of people who are not citizens of this country. Any of them can now hesitate to exercise their freedom of expression guaranteed by the first amendment (of the Constitution, editor’s note) for fear of being on board a detention center far from home, “said the magistrate.
-“Constitutional nightmare”
The sessions judge refused to match this release of the conditions suggested by the government in matters of freedom of movement. Rumeysa Ozturk is “free to return home to Massachusetts” and to “move” beyond this state, he said.
He nevertheless demanded that this release be supervised regularly by a municipal center for reintegration of prisoners in the Vermont which will report to him.
The magistrate also proposed that the lawyers of Rumeysa Ozturk and immigration services are suitable for “light conditions” to his freedom to come and go since it remains under an expulsion procedure.
“Spending more than six weeks in detention for writing a column is a constitutional nightmare. His release is a victory for anyone who defends justice, freedom of expression and fundamental human rights, “reacted in a press release Monica Allard, a lawyer for the influential organization of defense of ACLU civil rights.
In a similar case, another federal judge of Vermont had ordered on April 30 the release of a Palestinian student involved in the Movement at Columbia University against the war in Gaza and arrested in the process of naturalization two weeks before.
Mohsen Mahdawi is the co-founder of a group of Palestinian students at New York University Columbia, with Mahmoud Khalil, a figure of Propalestinian student mobilization in the United States, which the Trump administration has been trying to expel since its arrest on March 8.
Republican President Donald Trump launched an offensive against major American universities, accusing them of leaving the Palestinian support movements to the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, which he assimilates to anti -Semitism demonstrations.
