Detained Tufts student seeking transfer says asthma attacks worsened in custody

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI A Turkish Tufts University learner says her asthma attacks continue to worsen since she was taken into custody arguing ahead of her latest court hearing that her robustness has suffered while being held in crowded conditions Related Articles Georgia Republican Gov Brian Kemp won t run for US Senate seat in against Democrat Jon Ossoff Washington to host the NFL draft on the National Mall President Donald Trump says Rwanda confirms early talks to host deported US immigrants Visa crackdown leads international students in the US to reconsider summer voyage How Alcatraz became America s most of notorious prison Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by immigration bureaucrats as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on March She is right now being held in a detention center in Basile Louisiana A federal three-judge panel will hear arguments Tuesday over whether to grant a federal judge s order to transfer Ozturk to Vermont Since my arrest in the span of five weeks I have had at least eight asthma attacks where I have felt unable to control my coughing Ozturk wrote in court documents distributed Monday Prior to my arrest in the span of - years I had approximately such asthma attacks in which I felt unable to control my coughing A district court judge in Vermont had earlier ordered that the -year-old doctoral candidate be brought to the state for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained Ozturk s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights including free speech and due process The U S Justice Department which is appealing that ruling commented that an immigration court in Louisiana has jurisdiction over her scenario In court filings Ozturk says she s had trouble receiving proper healthcare care while at the Louisiana detention center noting that her asthma attacks can last up to minutes and that she s rarely given opportunities for fresh air I do not have control over the exposure to likely triggers Ozturk added The dorm rooms in detention are very crowded and the other women have shared seeing mice in the dorm rooms Additionally the air conditioning is running the majority of the day and I do not have immediate access to fresh air Immigration bureaucrats surrounded Ozturk as she walked along a street in a Boston suburb on March and drove her to New Hampshire and Vermont before putting her on a plane to a detention center in Louisiana Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper The Tufts Daily last year criticizing the university s response to trainee activists demanding that Tufts acknowledge the Palestinian genocide disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel A Department of Homeland Guard spokesperson reported in March without providing evidence that investigations determined that Ozturk engaged in sessions in sponsorship of Hamas a U S -designated terrorist group