As she continues to fight for her release from detention, Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Özturk detailed her confinement at an immigration facility in Louisiana, saying she has had four asthma attacks since her arrest, in a new court filing.
Özturk, a 30-year-old Turkish national, has been in federal custody since late March when federal agents in plainclothes arrested her on the street in Somerville. To date, she has not been charged with a crime.
After her arrest, Özturk was whisked to New Hampshire, then Vermont, before ultimately being sent to Louisiana, despite a federal judge ordering she be kept in Massachusetts.
In a declaration filed in federal court in Vermont, where her legal challenge to her detention was moved last week, Özturk detailed her experience since being detained.
The filings are impounded in federal court but published on the American Civil Liberties Union’s website.
Özturk was headed to an Iftar, an evening meal to break a Ramadan fast, when six federal agents arrested her.
After being driven away from Somerville, where she lives, Özturk said she “wanted to ask questions about what was happening to me,” but the agents were “scary and harsh.”
During the ride to New Hampshire, then Vermont, Özturk repeatedly asked to speak to a lawyer. Each time, she was denied.
“I was afraid that if something happened to me, no one would know where I was,” she wrote.
In a filing, Michael P. Drescher, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Vermont, said allowing detainees to speak to their lawyers while being taken to a detention facility would “raise serious security concerns.”
“It would be unreasonable to task transporting agents with assessing each detainee’s individual security risk,” he wrote in a memo opposing Özturk’s petition for release.
While in the car, Özturk, who had been fasting, asked for a meal. She was given two small packages of crackers and a bottle of water.
When Özturk arrived in Vermont, she spent the night in a small cell without a bed. She did not sleep and described feeling like she was going to faint.
“During the night, they came to my cell multiple times and asked me questions about wanting to apply for asylum and if I was a member of a terrorist organization,” the filing reads. “I tried to be helpful and answer their questions but I was so tired and didn’t understand what was happening to me.”
Eventually, Özturk was told she would be taken to Louisiana. An agent told her, “I hope we treated you with respect.”
The following morning, March 26, Özturk was flown from Vermont to Atlanta on the way to Louisiana. In the Atlanta airport, she had the first of four asthma attacks she has suffered in ICE custody.
During the attack, Özturk said she felt as though she couldn’t breathe and was unable to get over the attack despite using an inhaler. She asked to take medication prescribed for the attacks but was told it couldn’t be acquired at the airport.
Özturk said she has had three attacks since arriving in Louisiana. After the first, she was taken to the facility’s medical center, where she says a nurse removed her head covering without her permission. The second happened in her cell, which she shares with several other women. After the third, Özturk said she did not ask to go to the medical center despite being “in pain and very scared.”
The cell Özturk is housed in has a stated capacity of 14. But she is one of 24 women sharing the small space.
Özturk is asking a federal judge in Vermont to order her release, or at least return her to the state while her case is pending. But federal prosecutors say the only court with jurisdiction to do so is the federal court in Louisiana, where Özturk is currently detained.
And, prosecutors contend the district court does not have the authority to “order ICE to transfer an alien from one location to another.”
Lawyers for Özturk say her First Amendment right to free speech is being violated by her detention, as the only explanation to date about what prompted her detention is an op-ed she co-authored in the Tufts University student newspaper. The op-ed calls for the university to accept a series of resolutions passed by the Tufts student senate, among which was a call to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
“Ms. Öztürk is being retaliated against as part of the government’s policy to arrest and detain noncitizens based on First Amendment protected speech advocating for Palestinian rights,” her lawyers wrote.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Monday morning in federal court in Vermont.
More coverage of the case
- Warren calls on State Dept. to release memo on Rümeysa Özturk’s detention
- Federal judge in Vermont considering whether to take up Tufts student’s case
- No evidence linking Tufts student to antisemitism or terrorism, State Dept. office found
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