On Friday in Vermont, District Court Judge William Sessions ordered that Rumeysa Ozturk be brought back from Louisiana for a hearing. She will still be in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Ozturk is the Turkish doctoral candidate in Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University in Boston whose student visa was revoked because of her support for Palestinians. As her case moves forward, it is important to remember why the judge had to make such a ruling.

At a hearing last week, while Ozturk was detained far away, the lawyers spoke calmly. The judge thanked both sides for their professionalism, and the government’s extremism was almost hidden in the politeness. The government argues that even if Ozturk’s rights to free speech and due process were violated, the Vermont judge cannot hear her case and cannot order her release. (A hearing now scheduled for May would address the possibility of release on bail.)

Ozturk’s lawyers had originally filed a habeas corpus petition in Massachusetts, where their client was arrested. The Massachusetts judge sent the case to Vermont because it turned out that Ozturk was in the government’s custody there — somewhere in a government vehicle — by the time the case was filed. The government didn’t want the case heard in Massachusetts or Vermont, near Ozturk’s lawyers, her community, her school and her work.

The government argues that because Ozturk is detained in Louisiana, that’s where the case and the prisoner must remain. At the hearing, the government lawyer acknowledged that Ozturk’s attorneys were doing........

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