Sauter wrote that he “has been informed that [Ozturk] was detained outside of Massachusetts at the time” Talwani issued her order.

Ozturk was arrested at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday. Her attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, filed a habeas petition in US District Court in Boston on Tuesday and Talwani issued her order as part of that litigation, records show. The precise timing of those two steps was not immediately available Thursday.

Whether the Trump administration is choosing to ignore federal judges is being litigated in at least two other courts where one detainee was quickly relocated to Louisiana — and in the most extreme case – Venezuelan migrants were transferred to a high security prison in El Salvador.

It was still unclear Thursday why Ozturk, who is studying at the Tufts department of child study and human development, was swept up in the Trump administration’s campaign against pro-Palestinian activists.

Ozturk had voiced support for the pro-Palestinian movement at Tufts, but was not known as a prominent leader, the Globe reported.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security asserted Wednesday that Ozturk “engaged in support of Hamas,” a US-designated terror group behind the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that led to Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, but did not provide evidence of that claim.

Both Khanbabai and a representative of the Turkish government searched for the 30-year-old woman at ICE facilities on Tuesday but could not find her, according to an emergency request Khanbabai filed with the court Wednesday.

Ozturk needs two asthma medications that her attorney could not provide her because they did not know where she was physically located, records show. The attorney asked that ICE be ordered to disclose where Ozturk was being held, records show.

Judge Denis J. Casper Wednesday night ordered ICE to respond by 9 a.m. Thursday.

Federal officials met Casper’s deadline. In a three-page response, the federal prosecutor said he notified Ozturk’s lawyer at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday that she was in Louisiana posted on the ICE website.

Ozturk could not speak with her attorney until 9:45 p.m. Wednesday because she was being processed at the facility, he wrote.

In a posting on social media Thursday, Democratic US Rep. Stephen Lynch called the way Ozturk was taken into custody a “sickening reminder of the Gestapo-like conduct from another age.”

“Snatching an international student off our streets who is lawfully in our Country and attending one of our Universities and then bundling her off to an ICE detention center 1,700 miles away without a hearing is a sickening reminder of the Gestapo-like conduct from another age,” the South Boston congressman wrote.

He said he has asked ICE for a “full report” on Ozturk’s case and requested her “immediate return to Massachusetts.”

“We currently have about 80,000 foreign students attending more than 60 Colleges in the greater Boston/Cambridge area precisely because we have a reputation as a center of learning and intellectual, religious, and cultural tolerance,” he wrote. “Let’s keep it that way.”

The Trump administration has vowed to deport non-citizen pro-Palestinian activists whom it accuses of engaging in antisemitic or illegal protests. That campaign is part of Trump’s wider crackdown on elite universities, including funding cuts, bans on diversity programs, and investigations over schools’ alleged inaction on antisemitism.

Earlier in March, Trump’s antisemitism task force canceled $400 million of federal funding for Columbia University.

The administration also arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate and Algerian citizen who was a leader of the school’s pro-Palestinian movement. Officials are trying to deport him, too, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared his continued presence in the United States was detrimental to US foreign policy.

The administration recently told dozens of schools, including Tufts, they may face sanctions for failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment.

Ozturk’s lawyer said information about her client was recently added to Canary Mission, a website that compiles information about pro-Palestinian students and professors, and which activists say has led to harassment and doxxing. The website noted Ozturk co-wrote an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper last year criticizing the university’s response to the pro-Palestinian movement, urging Tufts to “end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination.”

Pro-Palestinian activists and free speech advocates have decried the arrests as unconstitutional repression of political speech.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell Wednesday called the footage of the arrest “disturbing.”

“Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views. This isn’t public safety. It’s intimidation that will, and should, be closely scrutinized in court,” Campbell said.

Reyyan Bilge, an assistant teaching professor in psychology at Northeastern University, told the Globe she has known Ozturk for more than a decade since Bilge taught Ozturk at Şehir University in Istanbul. Ozturk came to the United States to get her master’s degree at Columbia as a Fulbright scholar, Bilge said.

She graduated in 2020 from the developmental psychology program at Columbia Teacher’s College, according to a 2021 social media post by the school.

Bilge described Ozturk as soft-spoken and kind. “If you were to actually have a chat with her for about five minutes, you would understand how kind and how decent a person she is,” she said.

The arrest is “dystopic,” Bilge said. “You come to the US thinking that it’s going to be all wonderful.”

Jennifer Ruth Hoyden, a former classmate of Ozturk’s at Columbia Teachers College, said she was just “an extremely gentle human being.”

All of Ozturk’s family is in Turkey, and she only has friends here in the United States, Bilge said.

Bilge said Ozturk would never say anything to hurt anyone.

“She’s not antisemitic,” Bilge said. But like many other Muslims, Bilge said, Ozturk is concerned about the human rights of Palestinian people.

“But that’s freedom of speech,” Bilge said. “That’s just being human.”

On Wednesday evening, more than 2,000 people rallied in support of Ozturk at a park near Powder House Square and the Tufts campus. Among them were students from Tufts and Harvard, as well as residents from the surrounding neighborhoods. Some wore keffiyehs, a patterned scarf associated with Palestinian nationalism. Others wore yarmulkes, the Jewish skullcap. “Stand up, fight back!” they chanted.

Information from earlier Globe reporting was used in the account.

John R. Ellement can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @JREbosglobe. Sean Cotter can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @cotterreporter. Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @giuliamcdnr.