Indian American Attorney Esha Bhandari Secures Court Order for the Release of Turkish Student Detained by ICE

A federal court on Wednesday ordered the release of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Fulbright scholar and Tufts University Ph.D. student who had been detained for over six weeks by immigration authorities. Her offense? Co-authoring an op-ed in her university newspaper. In a triumph for First Amendment rights even for noncitizens, Öztürk was released on Friday.

The case represents the latest battlefront in what ACLU attorney Esha Bhandari describes as a troubling pattern: the use of immigration enforcement as a tool to silence political speech.

“The executive branch made a specific decision to detain Ms. Öztürk that was motivated by her speech,” Bhandari argued in court, successfully securing Öztürk’s release while her case proceeds.

At the heart of these cases lies a fundamental legal question: Can the government use a person’s immigration status to circumvent their First Amendment protections?

Bhandari’s position is unequivocal. “The First Amendment restricts government action, full stop,” she stated in a recent interview with First Amendment Watch. “The Immigration and Nationality Act has to be read consistent with the First Amendment.”

This argument challenges the government’s assertion that national security concerns or foreign policy implications justify targeting non-citizens for their political expression.

Bhandari has built a career defending digital-age civil liberties. Her previous cases include challenges to electronic device searches at borders and legal protections for online researchers investigating discrimination.

Öztürk’s case appears to be part of a broader enforcement pattern. Multiple international students have been detained or targeted following their participation in campus protests, including Columbia University activists Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung, and Cornell University’s Momodou Taal.

Rather than focusing on specific illegal actions, the government has explicitly targeted pro-Palestinian speech, according to Bhandari. Her concern extends beyond the immediate cases to what she sees as a dangerous precedent.

“If you’re part of a big tent protest movement, or if you’re at a protest and you engage in perfectly constitutionally protected speech, but some other people at that protest… engage in activity that’s unlawful that you somehow can be punished for that,” Bhandari explained. “That is guilt by association that violates our fundamental notions of due process in the country.”

The administration has reportedly invoked a rarely-used provision of immigration law asserting that certain individuals’ “presence or activities have foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

Bhandari counters that Congress specifically amended this provision in the 1980s to prevent its use against protected speech or political viewpoints. The provision was intended for exceptional circumstances, such as the presence of foreign government officials whose continued residence might complicate diplomatic relations.

“Their theory is that any pro-Palestinian activity, any criticism of the government of the United States or of a foreign government, has foreign policy implications,” Bhandari said. “That’s where we run up against the heart of the First Amendment.”

The ACLU attorney warns these enforcement actions have already produced a chilling effect extending far beyond the targeted individuals.

“We’ve been hearing from many people who are just too afraid, too vulnerable to speak out,” she noted. “It has had real consequences… even people who may not be sympathetic to the student protesters’ viewpoint… should be very troubled by a government that’s claiming for itself the power to make decisions on student protesters’ speech.”

Bhandari, who previously argued before the Supreme Court in United States v. Hansen, a case that narrowed a federal law criminalizing certain immigration-related speech, sees these cases as part of a concerning pattern of using “whatever tool of state power is lying around” to silence political opposition.

An adjunct professor at NYU School of Law and former clerk for Judge Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Bhandari has built a career defending digital-age civil liberties. Her previous cases include challenges to electronic device searches at borders and legal protections for online researchers investigating discrimination.

As these cases proceed through the courts, they will likely establish important precedents regarding the relationship between immigration enforcement and constitutional protections. The outcomes could determine whether non-citizens in the United States can freely participate in political discourse without fear of deportation or detention based on their viewpoints.