Afederal judge on Friday ordered the immediate release of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University who had been held for six weeks in an immigration detention center, ruling that her arrest and continued confinement were unlawful and raised serious constitutional concerns.

Judge William K. Sessions III of the U.S. District Court in Vermont found that Öztürk, who was detained in March after co-authoring a pro-Palestinian op-ed in her campus newspaper, had been targeted for her speech in a manner that violated her First Amendment and due process rights. The ruling is a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration’s use of visa revocations and deportation proceedings against foreign students accused of dissenting from U.S. foreign policy.There is no evidence here… absent consideration of the op-ed,” Sessions said in court, describing the government’s case as hinging entirely on her protected speech. “Her continued detention cannot stand.”

Öztürk, who appeared virtually from an ICE facility in Louisiana, was ordered released without restrictions on her travel, allowing her to return to her home in Massachusetts.

The ruling was announced as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was in the midst of a briefing with reporters. When asked about the decision, Leavitt suggested Sessions had overstepped. “We’ve made quite clear that lower level judges should not be dictating the foreign policy of the United States," Leavitt said.

Later on Friday, Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, announced that the Administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, the right to challenge a person’s detention by the government when the U.S. has been invaded or during an insurrection. Habeas corpus has only been suspended four times since the ratification of the Constitution: during the Civil War; in South Carolina during Reconstruction to combat the Ku Klux Klan; in the Philippines during a 1905 insurrection; and in Hawaii after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion,” Miller said, just days after a New York federal judge ruled that the Trump administration had not shown evidence that there was a foreign invasion to justify using the Alien Enemies Act for deportations.

Sessions’ order in the Öztürk case comes amid mounting scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s policy of revoking student visas on the basis of perceived political threats. Since returning to office, Trump has directed his administration to act aggressively against foreign nationals who the Administration has alleged are undermining American interests, particularly in the context of criticism of Israel and campus protests against the war in Gaza.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who revoked Öztürk’s visa, said her presence in the U.S. was contrary to American foreign policy interests and suggested she had aligned herself with groups hostile to Jewish students. A State Department memo cited the op-ed she co-authored and alleged links to a student organization that was temporarily suspended by Tufts.

“We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses,” Rubio told reporters. “If we’ve given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away.”