A federal judge has ordered the immediate release Turkish doctoral student who has been held at an immigration detention center for more than six weeks.
Tufts University scholar Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested by masked, plainclothes federal agents outside her Boston apartment in March and held since then as part of president Donald Trump's mass deportation program, but CBS News reported that an appeals court judge on Friday found that her First Amendment and due process rights had been violated.
"There is absolutely no evidence that she has engaged in violence or advocated violence," said U.S. District judge William Sessions. "She has no criminal record. She has done nothing other than essentially attend her university and expand her contacts within the community in such a supportive way."
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"Her continued detention cannot stand," the judge added.
The Trump administration has justified revoking her student visa by pointing to an opinion piece she co-authored in the student newspaper last year opposing Israel's war against Hamas, but the judge ruled that Öztürk was detained "simply and purely" due to "the expression she made or shared in the op-ed."
"There has been no evidence that has been introduced by the government other than the op-ed. I mean, that literally is the case," Sessions said. "There is no evidence here as the motivation absent the consideration of the op-ed."
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