Was the first amendment violated in the arrests of students? Trump lawyer won’t say it

During a Tuesday hearing about the fate of two international students who are confronted with deportation, a judge of the Court of Appeal asked an important question from the Trump government. Does it believe that the speech of the students is protected by the Constitution?

A government lawyer, Drew Ensign, refused to discuss the issue. “Honorable, we have not taken a position on that,” he said, adding to it, “I don’t have the authority to take a position about it.”

Trump officials have publicly said that they are taking a closer look and do not try to remove people who have been Involved in CampusOnrest related to the war in Gaza. Lawyers for the students, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi, have said that the movements violate the first amendment.

When avoiding the subject in the courtroom, near the American Court of Appeal for the second circuit in Manhattan on Tuesday, Mr Ensign illustrated one of the most important legal strategies of the government, because it tries to remove students and immigrants wider from the country, from the country: go fast, fight hard against technical issues and the most important constitutional questions for later.

The strategy has confused immigration lawyers and frustrated their lawyers. It has also effectively delayed some cases, including that of Mrs. Ozturk, who has been in detention in Louisiana for six weeks, where her lawyers say she is experiencing medical damage because of her untreated asthma.

Mrs. Ozturk, a Turkish student looking for her doctorate in the development of children at Tufts University, co -wrote an opinion piece that was published in the student newspaper of the school that is critical of Israel’s behavior of the war in Gaza. She was fascinated outside her apartment and custody on March 25 by masked federal agents.

The other student who is being discussed, Mohsen Mahdawi, was held in federal detention for about two weeks before he was liberated by a judge who compared the current political climate with McCarthyism. The Trump government has argued that the presence of Mr. Mahdawi in the United States harms his goals of foreign policy And could possibly undermine the peace process of the Middle East.

The distinction between their two cases emphasizes a practical effect of the government’s tactics. Absental disputes of their core constrictional claims, the fate of the students have been left to be determined by the random question of how quickly their lawyers could check where they were and submit petitions to release them.

Mrs Ozturk’s lawyer could not find her 24 hours after her arrest of March. She and various other students, including Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident and graduated in Columbia, were moved from the state to a detention facility in Louisiana.

Mr. Mahdawi’s arrest came later and his lawyers could find him faster and submit a temporarily limiting order to prevent him from being moved.

The hearing on Tuesday took place after the government had submitted a petition to combine Mrs Ozturk’s things and Mr. Mahdawi and to pause in both lower decisions of the court.

A judge in Vermont has ordered that Mrs. Ozturk is sent back to his state to determine whether she deserves release. The government tries to pause that order and also to hold its right to hold Mr. Mahdawi. It asked the Court of Appeal to rule on both issues in his favor.

But the three right panel – Susan L. Carney, Alison Nathan and Barrington D. Parker Jr. – took the opportunity to enable the government’s lawyer, Mr Ensign, in both cases to interrupt him often while trying to answer their questions.

“Help my thinking, take a position,” asked Judge Parker Mr Ensign after he initially refused to adopt an attitude whether the students’ speech was protected by the Constitution. Mr. Ensign played and said that the government was focused on jurisdictic rules, “not the underlying merits.”

Judge Parker asked when, in a hypothetical immigration case, problems with the first amendment would be decided. Mr Ensign said that such cases should first wave the Immigration Court before they end up in a court of appeal.

Mrs Ozturk’s lawyers have accused the government of ‘Forum Shopping’ by moving it to guardianship in Louisiana, where the Court of Appeal is one of the most conservative in the country.

Federal agents held Mrs. Ozturk close to her house in Somerville, Massachusetts, then drove her through New Hampshire to Vermont before she placed her on a plane to a detention center in Louisiana. Her lawyers argued in the court that federal agents deliberately tried to hide her place of residence for her lawyer, so that she could be transferred to Louisiana before her lawyer could submit her release. The government said that there were no beds available in detention facilities in New England.

While in detention her health has suffered; Her asthma attacks, which last up to 15 minutes, are already taking 45 minutes, according to her lawyers. They said that one nurse had violently removed her hijab, and another told her that her illness was ‘everything in your head’. Given the detention conditions, her asthma could become life threatening, her lawyers have argued.

Asked why it had taken so long before Mrs. Ozturk’s lawyer would find her after she was held, Mr Ensign replied: “The government does not necessarily provide real -time GPS data of each person in her detention.”

Before its detention, the Ministry of Interior Security and American Immigration and Customs enforcement studies concluded that Mrs Ozturk had “done activities to support Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that enjoys killing Americans.”

During a press conference after her arrest, State Secretary Marco Rubio spoke about the detention of Mrs. Ozturk. “We have given you a visa to come and study and obtain a diploma,” he said, “don’t become a social activist who tears our university campuses.”

The evidence they have offered is the opinion -essay of Mrs. Ozturk, which criticized the Tufts administration for not implementing a student resolution that censors Israel.

Her friends said that they would not recognize the version of Mrs. Ozturk’s government, who, according to them, was hardly a public figure on campus and who had been interested in understanding how children are influenced by violence.

The lawyers of Mrs. Ozturk have submitted a case to release her on humanitarian grounds, with reference to the risks for her health “in addition to the deafening silence of the government’s failure to produce any justification for her detention,” her lawsuits said.

Mr. Mahdawi only barely missed Louisiana, according to the court applications. He was held last month immediately after passing the test to become an American citizen and accompanied in a black van. Not long after, he was taken to an airport in Burlington, VT., Where immigration officers tried to put him on a flight to Louisiana.

But the flight had already left. The agents seemed to be visibly upset that they had missed it, according to judicial documents submitted by his lawyers. After they have argued for his release in a court in Vermont, the judge, Geoffrey W. Crawford liberated him, although his immigration business has continued and he still runs the risk of deportation.