US federal judge orders Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk released

A US federal judge on Friday ordered the release of Turkish Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who has spent six weeks in immigration detention in a remote part of Louisiana. 

"Her continued detention chills the speech of millions in this country who are not citizens," the judge said, citing the government's only evidence for arresting and detaining her, which was an opinion article she wrote criticising Israel's war on Gaza. 

“These are very substantial claims of both due-process and First Amendment violations," the judge added, according to court reporters in the room.

Ozturk testified via video link at the three-hour bail hearing on Friday, during which she suffered an asthma attack after complaining that she was locked up in poor and unsanitary conditions. 

Her arrest by plainclothes immigration agents stunned the world. Caught on a nearby security camera, it showed a group of people, all in masks, ambushing Ozturk on the street outside her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, northwest of Boston. They took her away in an unmarked car.