WASHINGTON – Today, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Senator Edward J. Markey (D-MA), and Congressman James P. McGovern (MA-02) released the following statement after the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit directed the Trump administration to comply with a lower court order to transfer Rümeysa Öztürk from ICE custody in Louisiana to Vermont. The court ordered the government to move Ms. Öztürk within one week. On March 25, 2025, Ms. Öztürk, a PhD student at Tufts University, was abducted by six plainclothes ICE agents off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. She was quickly moved across state lines and shipped more than 1,500 miles away from her community to a detention facility in Louisiana. 

“We applaud the Second Circuit for rejecting the Trump administration’s attempt to delay complying with the district court’s order to transfer Rümeysa Öztürk from Louisiana to Vermont, where she will be closer to her community and to her legal counsel,” said Pressley, Markey, and McGovern. “Rümeysa should never have been abducted and transferred thousands of miles away to begin with. She is being unlawfully detained for writing an op-ed in her school newspaper and has not been charged with a single crime. Last month, we visited Rümeysa in detention in Louisiana, where she faces intolerable conditions and has suffered multiple asthma attacks. Rümeysa’s case is part of an alarming trend by the Trump administration to trample individuals’ constitutional rights to due process and free speech. Rümeysa must be released and have her visa restored immediately, and we will continue to ring the alarm loudly until that is the case.”

On April 22, 2025, Pressley, Markey and McGovern, along with Representative Bennie Thompson (MS-02), Ranking Member of House Committee on Homeland Security, and Representative Troy Carter (LA-02), visited the Louisiana ICE facility where Rümeysa Öztürk was being held. Also on April 22, Senator Markey, Representative Pressley, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons to demand answers about the Trump administration’s concerning practice of detaining individuals, such as Öztürk, far from their attorneys and communities and in legal environments where their rights are more difficult to defend. The Trump administration is forum shopping to obtain a legal outcome favorable to its deportation agenda.

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