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Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk released from immigration detention

Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student, was ordered released by a federal judge in Vermont in the latest setback for the Trump administration's effort to deport noncitizen activists it accuses of antisemitism.

Accompanied by her lawyer, Öztürk walked out of the immigration detention center in rural Louisiana where she's been detained for more than six weeks, since masked federal agents picked her up on a suburban Boston street as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian student activists. At a bail hearing earlier in the day, Judge William K. Sessions of the U.S. District Court for Vermont said that her arrest and detention appeared likely to have been carried out solely in retaliation for an op-ed she wrote in a campus newspaper criticizing her school leaders' response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. After her arrest, the Trump administration accused Öztürk of engaging in "activities in support of Hamas," and, according to , the Department of Homeland Security determined that she had been involved in associations that "may undermine U.S foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students."

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