By Nate Raymond and Jack Queen
(Reuters) – The Trump administration on Friday lost a bid to throw out or move to Louisiana a Tufts University student’s legal challenge to her immigration arrest, which sparked protests against the president’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian activists on American campuses.
U.S. District Judge Denise Casper said the case brought by Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, in Boston, Massachusetts, should instead be heard in Vermont, where Ozturk was initially moved into custody after her arrest was captured in a viral video, prompting demonstrations.
The administration of Republican President Donald Trump had asked Casper to move the case to Louisiana, where Ozturk is currently being held. Any appeals there would have been handled by one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country.
Ozturk was arrested by masked, plainclothes immigration agents near Boston after she authored a pro-Palestinian opinion piece in a student newspaper.
Immigrant rights groups and some Democratic lawmakers denounced her arrest and called it a dramatic example of Trump suppressing speech that does not align with his views.
Ozturk is one of several pro-Palestinian students whose arrest by immigration authorities has drawn legal challenges and condemnation in recent weeks.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has accused Ozturk, without providing evidence, of “engaging in activities in support of Hamas,” a group which the U.S. government categorizes as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Officials revoked Ozturk’s visa and are seeking her removal from the country.
Ozturk filed her case in Massachusetts, where she was arrested, but authorities moved her to Vermont and then Louisiana. She alleged in her court petition that she was targeted in retaliation for exercising her right to free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Casper said Friday that the case belonged in Vermont federal court because that is where Ozturk was being held when her lawyers filed a case challenging her arrest as unlawful.
Tufts on Wednesday called for Ozturk’s release, saying it knew of no facts warranting her arrest or suggesting she violated campus policies.
She is a Fulbright Scholar and student in Tufts’ doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development and had been in the country on a student visa.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond Jack Queen; Editing by Nia Williams)
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