Laura Barron-Lopez:
That’s right.
So, Rumeysa Ozturk is a Ph.D. student from Tufts who was not charged with a crime. Her student visa was revoked and she’s been in detention since March because of an op-ed that she wrote that was critical of Israel that the administration said is evidence that she poses a foreign policy — an adverse foreign policy consequence.
And the judge today, District Judge William Sessions, said that the government’s case was entirely based on this op-ed that Ozturk wrote, that essentially there was no evidence that she has engaged in violence or advocated violence to back up their claims that she poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
They said she does — the judge said that she does not pose a flight risk and so he placed no travel restrictions on her. He called her health — she suffers from asthma and she even had an asthma attack during the hearing today. He called her health in extraordinary circumstance and said that her further detention could potentially pose dangerous — a danger to her health.
And this is one significant line that the judge as well said, Judge William Sessions said, that: “Her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”
And I just want to say also, Geoff, that she was initially detained not far from her home. She was arrested by plainclothes agents off the streets of Boston and. When that video was released, it was pretty stunning to see.
