A US federal appeals court heard arguments on behalf of Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was detained in March by immigration authorities in retaliation for co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper criticising Israel's carnage in Gaza.
"Ms Ozturk was held behind bars for six weeks for writing an op-ed, and that never should have happened," Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said during an online briefing after the hearing.
"The government is asking the court to be the first to ever hold that there is no access to judicial review if the government weaponises immigration detention authority to keep someone locked up simply for exercising their free speech rights. Our argument is that of course, the courts have a role to play when individuals' liberty and freedom of speech are at stake," she said after the hearing at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
"There's no reason that Rumeysa Ozturk should be in detention," she added.
Opinion piece led to arrest
Ozturk's message, read during the briefing, said her op-ed called on Tufts University to heed student voices and recognise the Palestinian genocide.
She described writing as "one of the most peaceful methods of communication and ways of taking action" and "the heart of freedom of expression."
"Unbelievably, it was my writing, a single opinion piece published in our student newspaper, that led to my arrest and ultimately landed me in a damp, crowded, and inhumane ICE for-profit prison for 45 days," she said.
"As my case continues to move forward, I am grateful for the outpouring of support, and expect to see the basic principles of our democracy prevail," she added.
Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar and PhD student in child development at Tufts University, was kidnapped in broad daylight by plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who surrounded her outside her Somerville, Massachusetts home on March 25, an incident captured on video.
Her student visa was revoked by the State Department, and she was sent to an ICE detention centre in Louisiana, where she spent six weeks, before a federal judge in Vermont ordered her release on May 9, citing her asthma and a lack of justification for her continued detention.
Crackdown on pro-Palestine voices
Ozturk's arrest came after a long list of names that have been targeted for advocating for Palestinians.
It started on March 8, when pro-Palestine activist and Columbia University graduate, Mahmoud Khalil, was arrested at his apartment building in Manhattan.
A few days after Khalil's arrest, Trump's claim came due after another pro-Palestine scholar, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian researcher at Georgetown University, was arrested.
His attorney said he was arrested because of the Palestinian identity of his wife. He was released in May.
After the arrest of Suri, authorities went after another pro-Palestine student, Momodou Taal, asking him to turn himself in.
On March 25, Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student, said she sued the Trump administration to stop her deportation from the US over her participation in a pro-Palestine protest last Spring.
On April 14, authorities arrested Mohsen Mahdawi during his citizenship interview before he was released on April 30.
