A federal judge in Vermont said Monday he needs to hear more evidence before ruling on whether Rümeysa Öztürk — a Turkish graduate student arrested by federal agents in Massachusetts late last month, and then briefly detained in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in St. Albans — should be released from ICE custody. 

Judge William Sessions penciled in a hearing for April 14 in U.S. District Court in Burlington on the Tufts University student’s case, after discussing the proceedings in an afternoon telephone hearing with her attorneys and a federal prosecutor. 

Öztürk is currently being held at an ICE facility in Basile, Louisiana.

After her sudden arrest March 25 on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, ICE agents whisked Öztürk north via Lebanon, New Hampshire to the agency’s St. Albans field office, where they then held her overnight. The next morning, ICE flew Öztürk from Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport to Louisiana, where she has been detained since. 

Öztürk’s attorneys are asking for her release, arguing ICE wrongly targeted her, in the first place, for exercising her right to free speech. The government appears to have targeted Öztürk — who had a visa to study in the U.S. — for co-authoring an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized university leaders for their response to demands that the school divest from companies with ties to Israel, her attorneys have said. 

While Öztürk’s challenge was originally filed in federal court in Massachusetts, last week, a judge in Boston ordered the proceedings moved to Vermont, pointing to how Öztürk’s attorneys submitted their challenge after federal agents had brought Öztürk to St. Albans. The government had sought to move her case not to Vermont, but to Louisiana — which, notably, is a significantly more conservative jurisdiction.

The student’s attorneys have contended that they did not know her whereabouts at the time they filed their legal challenge. The government has argued that ICE did not have a facility in Massachusetts where it could have lodged Öztürk for the night.

Sessions said during Monday’s call that he will consider whether he agrees Öztürk’s case should proceed in Vermont. If he does, he told the attorneys, he could then rule on the question of whether Öztürk should be released. 

Acting U.S. Attorney for Vermont Michael Drescher told Sessions the government believes Öztürk’s challenge should be dismissed and entirely delegated to the federal immigration system. Although the government has revoked Öztürk’s visa, the Boston judge ordered that Öztürk could not immediately be removed from the country.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has previously told reporters that he decided Öztürk should no longer be allowed to study in the country because, in his telling, she participated in the pro-Palestinian movement that swept through many college campuses last year.

Ramzi Kassem, an attorney representing Öztürk, urged Sessions on Monday to order the 30-year-old student’s release as soon as possible so Öztürk could return to Tufts’ campus. The university’s president, Sunil Kumar, has also backed her release in court filings. 

Kassem argued there is no justification for keeping the student in custody, in part because the government has not claimed it is concerned she will try to evade any potential prosecution.

But Sessions said he wasn’t prepared to rule on that question without first weighing additional evidence. He gave Öztürk’s lawyers and the government until Thursday evening to file more information with the court ahead of the hearing next week.