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/APUpdated at 3:26 p.m.A Turkish graduate 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 Vermont and held there overnight, lawyers for the federal government said in a court filing Tuesday.ICE officials detained Rümeysa Öztürk at the agency’s field office in St. Albans the night of March 25, court records show. Then, the next morning, officials took the 30-year-old to Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport, where she was flown to Alexandria, Louisiana.From there, Öztürk was transported to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana, federal prosecutors wrote in the filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. As of Wednesday afternoon, Öztürk was being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, according to the agency’s online detainee locator.VTDigger obtained a copy of the court filing, which is not publicly viewable on the federal government’s online court records website, on Wednesday. The details of the filing were previously reported by several Boston-area news outlets late Tuesday.Öztürk was first detained by masked, plainclothes agents while walking on a street near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, the evening of March 25. Surveillance camera video of her arrest has since been widely published, and the incident has sparked large protests in the Boston area in recent days. Attorneys representing Öztürk, who had been 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. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that he had revoked Öztürk’s visa ahead of her sudden arrest because she participated in the pro-Palestinian movement on college campuses last year. But the Associated Press has reported that, according to some of her friends and colleagues, Öztürk was not closely involved in the movement on Tufts’ campus.“If you come into the United States as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country, but you’re not going to do it in our country,” Rubio told reporters at a press conference March 27.Öztürk’s attorneys challenged her arrest in federal court in Boston the night of March 25, shortly after it took place. That same night, Judge Indira Talwani issued an order that the student not be taken out of 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 her decision, Öztürk was located in Vermont.Advocates gather outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in St. Albans on Tuesday, January 21. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerIn an emailed statement to VTDigger, Brett Max Kaufman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said that “the government is trying to play a cruel game of jurisdictional musical chairs with Ms. Öztürk’s life,” adding, “her rights and freedom hang in the balance.”According to the latest court filing, federal agents arrested Öztürk in Somerville around 5:25 p.m. Shortly after, she was taken to Methuen, Massachusetts, and then to 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, the latest filing states.At 4 a.m. the following morning, the filing states, ICE transported Öztürk to the airport in Burlington, and she left the state on a flight “with ICE officials” around 5:30 a.m. Federal immigration officials brought Öztürk to the ICE office in Vermont because the agency does not have detention facilities for women in Massachusetts, the government’s lawyers argued this week.“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.ICE did not return multiple requests for comment in recent weeks regarding their operations in Vermont and use of the Burlington airport.The incident drew criticism Wednesday from Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott, who said at his weekly press conference that “we should be ashamed that we’ve come to this level.” While some people might not “agree” with Öztürk’s beliefs, Scott said, she should be allowed to express them: “It’s a constitutional right.”Asked if Vermont could limit ICE’s operations in the state, Scott said use of the airport, or federal properties, is “something the federal government has control over.” Joe Magee, deputy chief of staff for Burlington’s mayor, said in a separate interview that 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.ICE uses both commercial and chartered flights to transport certain detainees, according to the agency’s website. Brett Stokes, director of Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Center for Justice Reform Clinic, which provides pro bono immigration law services, said in an interview the use of regular, commercial flights for that purpose is not out of the ordinary. One Vermont resident, Shea Mahoney, described witnessing what she believed may have been a transfer of federal immigration detainees while on a flight out of the Burlington airport last month. Mahoney was on Delta Airlines flight DL1382 on March 19, she told VTDigger.“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.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 said he was not personally 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. The department maintains a contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to hold people detained by federal immigration agents. While the contract allows immigration authorities to utilize all of Vermont’s six prisons, people detained by ICE are typically held at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans and Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, a women’s facility. In an interview Wednesday, Vermont Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, condemned Öztürk’s detention in the state, describing 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. Emma Cotton contributed reporting.Read the story on VTDigger here: Tufts graduate student was held in Vermont after arrest in Massachusetts by immigration agents, feds say. ...read more read less