Hundreds of people gather in Somerville, Massachusetts, on March 26, 2025, to demand the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student at Tufts University, who was arrested by federal agents. Photo by Michael Casey/APA Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University who was detained by federal agents in Massachusetts last week — and whose case has since drawn national attention — was later taken to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in St. Albans and held there overnight, lawyers for the federal government said in a court filing Tuesday.After detaining Rümeysa Öztürk at ICE’s field office on Gricebrook Road in St. Albans the night of March 25, court records state, officials took her to Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport the next morning, where she was flown to Alexandria, Louisiana.From there, Öztürk was transported to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana, court records show — where she has been held since, The Boston Globe and other outlets reported.   Several Boston-area news outlets reported on the court filing late Tuesday and described it in articles. The filing appears to exist in the federal government’s online court records system, but was not publicly viewable on the website Wednesday morning. However, Joshua J. Friedman, a freelance writer and editor, posted records that appeared to match on the social media platform Bluesky late Tuesday. Officials took Öztürk first to New Hampshire, then to Vermont, shortly after she was arrested by masked agents while walking on a street near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts around 5:30 p.m. on March 25, court records show.Attorneys representing Öztürk, who was living in the U.S. on a student visa, have argued that she was wrongly targeted for exercising her rights to free speech. Last March, Öztürk co-wrote an op-ed for Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized university leaders for their response to demands that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from companies with ties to Israel.Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had decided to revoke Öztürk’s visa because she was part of the pro-Palestinian movement on college campuses last year. Recent reporting by the Globe, though, found that Öztürk played a limited role in the movement on Tufts’ campus. In response to a request from her lawyers the night of March 25, a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered that Öztürk be kept in Massachusetts. But in Tuesday’s filing, prosecutors representing President Donald Trump’s administration argued that the judge did not have jurisdiction over the case because, at the time of the court’s ruling, Öztürk was already located in Vermont.According to the court filing, ICE officials arrested Öztürk around 5:25 p.m., shortly after which she was taken to Methuen, Massachusetts and Lebanon, New Hampshire, before arriving at the St. Albans Field Office at 10:28 p.m. The judge’s order was issued at 10:55 p.m. that same night, court records state.At 4 a.m. the following morning, the filings state, ICE officials transported Öztürk to the airport in Burlington, and she departed on a flight around 5:30 a.m. ICE transported Öztürk to its St. Albans field office because it does not have detention facilities in Massachusetts for women, the government argued. Advocates gather outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in St. Albans on Tuesday, January 21, 2025. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger“ICE routinely transfers individuals arrested in one state to facilities in other states because of operational considerations such as bedspace and designation of risk categories,” the attorneys wrote.A spokesperson for Gov. Phil Scott did not immediately return a request for comment. ICE did not return multiple requests for comment in recent weeks regarding their operations in Vermont and use of the Burlington airport.Shea Mahoney, a Vermont resident, was on Delta flight DL1382 on March 19 out of the Burlington airport when she witnessed what she believed may have been a transfer of federal immigration detainees.“There was an elderly Hispanic woman in a wheelchair, a younger Hispanic woman, and an African woman in Muslim headdress who carried a few belongings in a mesh bag that had a U.S. Border Patrol and Customs and U.S. Department of Homeland Security tag on it,” Mahoney wrote to VTDigger. “They were traveling with two men who were dressed in plainclothes but had military issue backpacks and seemed to be escorting them.”Mahoney said she did not hear explicitly that the passengers were being deported or held by immigration authorities. Still, the events sparked concern.“It set off alarm bells,” Mahoney said. “ I really can’t think of any other scenario that would explain the situation. It was pretty shocking.”The early morning Delta flight is a regular route to Atlanta. Flight booking websites indicate the flight is likely the first leg of the fastest commercial route to Alexandria, Louisiana, where court records indicate ICE transferred Öztürk.Joe Magee, deputy chief of staff for Burlington’s mayor, said he had no information regarding federal immigration authorities using the airport, which the city operates, and neither did the airport’s director. “We don’t really have control over the federal agencies using the airport,” Magee said. In an interview on Wednesday, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, described the present state of federal immigration action as “a waking nightmare.”The federal government is “deliberately pushing a collapse of the boundary between police activity, the border activity that’s going on, and civilian activity,” Baruth said, adding that lawmakers were working on legislation to protect immigrants in Vermont from the “horrific” situation unfolding. Thomas Cartwright, a refugee advocate who has spent years tracking ICE deportation flights, said it’s extremely challenging to verify whether immigration authorities utilized a commercial flight to transfer detainees. He also said he was not aware of ICE-chartered planes flying out of the Burlington airport. A Vermont Department of Corrections spokesperson said the department had no record of lodging Öztürk.This story will be updated.Read the story on VTDigger here: Tufts PhD student was transported to Vermont after arrest in Massachusetts by immigration officials, court records show. ...read more read less