Ozturk v. Trump: A Vermont Habeas Defeats an Interstate Transfer
- Citation
- Ozturk v. Trump, No. 2:25-cv-00374 (D. Vt.) (Sessions, J.); 2d Cir. denial of stay May 6–7, 2025; release order May 9, 2025; oral argument 2d Cir. Sept. 30, 2025
- Court
- U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont
- Judge
- Hon. William K. Sessions III
- Statute
- 28 U.S.C. § 2241; First and Fifth Amendments; 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a)
- Holding
- District court retained habeas jurisdiction notwithstanding ICE’s post-petition interstate transfer; ordered transfer back to Vermont and release on bail; petitioner raised “very substantial” First Amendment and due-process claims.
Rumeysa Ozturk was a Turkish national, a Ph.D. student at Tufts University, and a Fulbright scholar. On March 25, 2025, plainclothes ICE agents arrested her in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her visa had been revoked, without notice to her, four days earlier. The asserted basis for the revocation and arrest was a co-authored op-ed in the Tufts Daily criticizing Tufts’s response to a Senate resolution about events in Gaza. ICE moved her across multiple states to LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana.
The Vermont jurisdictional ruling
Ozturk’s habeas petition was filed in the District of Vermont, where she had been physically located when ICE took custody (the agency had moved her through Vermont as part of the multi-state transfer). On April 18, 2025, Judge William Sessions ordered the government to transfer her back to Vermont by May 1. The Second Circuit affirmed the transfer order on May 6-7, 2025, finding the government had failed to show irreparable harm.
The jurisdictional analysis is the case’s most influential contribution. Where ICE transfers a habeas petitioner across districts after the petition has been filed, courts have applied the “unknown custodian” exception to the ordinary district-of-confinement rule. The exception reflects the practical impossibility of pinning down a single custodian at the moment of filing when ICE is actively engaged in interstate movement. The Second Circuit’s May 7 affirmance solidified the exception in this circuit and confirmed that forum-manipulation by transfer cannot defeat habeas jurisdiction.
The release order
On May 9, 2025, the day after Ozturk’s return to Vermont, the court granted release on bail. The opinion found her First Amendment claims “very substantial” and noted the absence of any record evidence supporting continued detention beyond her co-authorship of the op-ed. The court declined to credit the government’s post-hoc characterizations of her speech and emphasized the chilling effect of detention based on protected expression.
“On the record presented, there is no evidence to support continued detention absent consideration of her op-ed.”
The Second Circuit appeal
The government’s appeal was argued before the Second Circuit on September 30, 2025, paired with the appeal in Mahdawi v. Trump from the same district. The principal question is the same as in Khalil: whether 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(9) channels First Amendment retaliation claims into the petition-for-review process and strips district-court habeas jurisdiction. A decision was pending as of this writing. Whatever the Second Circuit holds, the case is widely expected to figure prominently in any Supreme Court review.
A settlement was reported in April 2026 resolving certain ancillary claims; the underlying habeas posture and the appellate question of jurisdiction continue to develop.
Significance
Ozturk matters most for the jurisdictional architecture it confirmed. The combination of the Vermont district court’s willingness to enter aggressive transfer-back orders and the Second Circuit’s affirmance has substantially reduced ICE’s ability to evade habeas jurisdiction by post-petition transfer. That practical victory has been compounded by similar rulings in Khan Suri (E.D. Va.), Chung (S.D.N.Y.), and the Khalil district-court phase (D.N.J.), all of which applied versions of the unknown-custodian exception.
The case also illustrates how the immigration-habeas docket has become a central forum for First Amendment claims that, in earlier eras, would have been raised in different procedural postures. Detention-based retaliation against noncitizen speech is the new battleground, and the writ of habeas corpus is the principal vehicle.
Filed under First Amendment Detentions. Published May 9, 2025 (release); September 30, 2025 (Second Circuit argument).