Finally, after being kidnapped during daylight hours in a public street near Tufts University where she was a graduate student by masked unidentified people in unmarked cars who were later revealed to be ICE agents, and then quickly transferred to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, Rümeysa Öztürk was released today after 45 days in captivity. Her release had been ordered by a federal judge.

A federal judge on Friday morning had ordered Öztürk’s return to Vermont, where she was briefly held after being grabbed on the street by masked immigration agents near Boston, for hearings. But the judge decided not to wait for her physical transportation and she appeared remotely from Louisiana at the hearing in Burlington on Friday.

A federal judge on Friday morning had ordered Öztürk’s return to Vermont, where she was briefly held after being grabbed on the street by masked immigration agents near Boston, for hearings. But the judge decided not to wait for her physical transportation and she appeared remotely from Louisiana at the hearing in Burlington on Friday.

The ruling to release her came at the end of a hearing where the judge, William Sessions, said that the process by which she was placed in immigration detention “raises very significant due process concerns”.

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On 25 March, Öztürk, 30, a Turkish national and PhD student studying child development, had been bundled into an unmarked car by agents to be taken away without due process and is battling a deportation order issued by the Trump administration after she co-authored an opinion article in a student newspaper that was critical of Israel.

Sessions said her continued detention “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens. Any one of them may now avoid exercising their first amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center from their home. For all of those reasons, the court finds that her continued detention cannot stand, that bail is necessary to make the habeas [petition] … effective.”

He added: “This is a woman who’s just totally committed to her academic career …there is absolutely no evidence that that she has engaged in violence or advocated violence. She has no criminal record … therefore, the court finds that she does not pose a danger to the community.”
He ordered the Trump administration to release Öztürk from custody “immediately” pending further proceedings, and said she was free to “return to her home in Massachusetts”.

This is not the end of the story for her or for others like her who are being targeted for speech that the Trump gang does not like. When the law gets in the way of their arbitrary actions, they try to circumvent the law. One of the basic due process rights against arbitrary arrest and detention is the writ to habeas corpus, the right to challenge one’s detention, that has been used on behalf of numerous people to try and get them out of the American ICE gulags.

So now the Trump gang is trying to gut habeas corpus. The spurious basis for the attempt is that the US is currently experiencing an ‘invasion’, the justification used in the past to suspend habeas corpus.

The Trump administration is considering suspending the writ of habeas corpus, the legal right to challenge one’s detention, Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, said on Friday.

“The constitution is clear, and that of course is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus could be suspended in time of invasion. So that’s an option we’re actively looking at. A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not,” Miller said to a group of reporters at the White House.

The US constitution says: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” The writ of habeas corpus has only been suspended four times in US history, most notably by Abraham Lincoln during the civil war. It was also suspended during efforts to fight the Ku Klux Klan in the 19th century in South Carolina, in the Philippines in 1905 and after Pearl Harbor.

Suspending habeas corpus would be an extremely aggressive move that would dramatically escalate the Trump administration’s efforts to attack the rule of law in American courts as it tries to deport people without giving them a chance to challenge the basis of their removals.
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The administration has already attempted to deport people without due process by invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that allows the president to do so in a time of war.

The Trump administration has justified its actions by arguing that the US is under “invasion” by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. Multiple judges have rejected the idea that the United States is under invasion and tried to halt the removals.

That the US has been invaded by a Venezuelan gang has to be one of the most absurd claims ever, that would be laughable if it were not for the fact that that the people making it are in positions of power. These people are really vindictive and will not hesitate to use the full force of the government against anyone they target, so Öztürk and others like her who are in their crosshairs, are by no means safe even if they win some court victories..

Thee courts are not going to accept such a ‘invasion’ justification, which means that if Trump goes ahead with it, there will be yet another legal confrontation that goes up to the Supreme Court.