An immigration judge postponed a University of Minnesota student’s deportation hearing Tuesday after the Department of Homeland Security said it needed more time to determine charges against the student, who has been in custody for more than two weeks.
Doğukan Günaydın, a Turkish citizen studying for an MBA at the Carlson School of Management, has been in immigration detention since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him near his St. Paul apartment on March 27. The Department of Homeland Security has cited a conviction from a June 2023 drunk-driving incident as the reason for detaining Günaydın.
In a bond hearing on Friday, Laura Trosen, counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed to Immigration Judge Sarah Mazzie that the agency was dropping its first two charges against Günaydın and instead pursuing a new third charge, alleging that he is a threat to public safety.
But on Tuesday, a different DHS lawyer walked back the rescission of the prior two charges, saying the agency would like to “reserve on this issue.” She asked for additional time on “removability.”
“That’s confusing to me,” Mazzie said, considering what Trosen had told her days before.
However, Mazzie agreed to give DHS an additional seven days to file its documents, and Günaydın’s lawyer, Hannah Brown, an additional seven days to respond. She said that court would reconvene on May 6. “I will issue a decision at that time,” she said.
Brown asked to confirm: “We’re still not sure what the specific charges are?”
“Sounds that way to me,” Mazzie replied.
Mazzie adjourned the hearing. It lasted for 10 minutes.
‘Backtrack, change the story, and confuse the issues’
Brown fired back on DHS’ unclear charges in an amended federal lawsuit filed Friday.
“The government’s pattern in Mr. Günaydın’s case has been to backtrack, change the story, and confuse the issues,” she wrote. “The timing of Respondents’ actions in dealing with Mr. Günaydın is at best incompetent and at worst intentional gamesmanship designed to punish him and keep him detained for as long as possible. Certainly, after more than two weeks of detention, Mr. Günaydın feels the latter.”
Brown also said that by invoking the newest charge — that Günaydın is a threat to public safety — DHS has stripped Mazzie of her ability to free him on bond.
According to federal law, an immigration judge “may not redetermine conditions of custody” for anyone detained under Section 237(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That’s the section of the law citing “any other criminal activity which endangers public safety or national security,” under which the government is detaining Günaydın.
“Respondents, without acknowledging any wrongdoing or missteps, apparently urge the Court to allow them to hold someone like Mr. Günaydın for weeks in detention while they work backwards to figure out the justification,” Brown wrote Friday.
In his response to Brown’s amended lawsuit, Assistant U.S. Attorney Friedrich Siekert wrote Monday that the government’s position had been “consistent and focused throughout this litigation.”
“Respondents acknowledge that the charges lodged against Doğukan have changed but maintain that the decision to institute removal proceedings and to litigate in immigration court the question of whether his DWI conviction makes him removable was always within Respondents’ authority,” Siekert wrote.
Siekert said that Günaydın could avoid mandatory detention by “demonstrating that he is not an alien, was not convicted of the predicate crime, or that [ICE] is otherwise substantially unlikely to establish that he is in fact subject to mandatory detention.”
Three more weeks in jail
About 25 of Günaydın’s supporters — a mix of close friends with whom he spends holidays and activists from the University of Minnesota — came to support him in court Tuesday. Günaydın appeared remotely from the Sherburne County Jail.
As they left the courthouse, several of his supporters expressed frustration and anger that Günaydın would remain in jail for three more weeks because the government had still not decided on his charges.
Fikret Insel, who attended St. Olaf College with Günaydın, described the results from immigration court thus far as “so frustrating.” He thought Brown made a good case for Günaydın on Friday, he said. “It just seemed like the prosecutors weren’t as prepared.”
The University of Minnesota’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society held a rally outside the courthouse after the brief hearing.
Rahsaan Mahadeo, a faculty member in the African American and African Studies department, led the crowd in chants. He said that his father was deported when he was in middle school, and that two of his uncles were deported as well. One died as a result.
He reminded the crowd that after Günaydın’s DWI arrest, he sold his car and no longer has a valid license.
“What Doğukan did in the wake of his original arrest proves that he’s more responsible than most people, not reckless,” he said.
Leila Sundin, a biochemistry major in the College of Biological Sciences, told the crowd to come back for the next hearing.
“We’re going to keep showing up, because what’s happening right now inside there and at our university isn’t a single case,” Sundin said. “It is a threat to thousands of people, people who are innocent, people who have a right to an education.”
Günaydın’s next hearing is scheduled for May 6. By that time, he will have been in immigration detention for more than a month.
