Lawmakers visit students Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk as they face deportation

A team of Democratic lawmakers have met two foreign students who are currently in immigration detention in Louisiana as the White House seeks to deport them.

The group visited two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities where former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, a graduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, are being held.

The two students, who participated in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, were detained separately in March by immigration officers.

Their arrests form part of the White House's crackdown on what it has classified as antisemitism on US college campuses.

The Democratic group included: representatives Cleo Fields and Troy Carter, both of Louisiana; Bennie Thompson of Mississippi; Ayana Pressley of Massachusetts; and Sen Edward J Markey, also of Massachusetts.

The visit was "to let them know we stand firm with them, in support of free speech" Rep Carter told reporters after the meeting. He said the facilities seemed "clean", but that multiple detainees complained about cold room temperatures.

Sen Markey noted that neither student has been charged with any crime. He accused the White House of sending them to a Republican-led state in an effort to "circumscribe the constitutional rights of Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil".

Ms Öztürk has suffered multiple asthma attacks while in custody, he said, adding that she and other detainees inside the facility are "not getting the medical attention which they need and deserve".

Mahmoud Khalil has been at the Louisiana detention centre since 8 March, when immigration officers told him he was being deported for taking part in protests against the war in Gaza.

The 30-year-old, who lives in New York, was a student negotiator at Columbia University during pro-Palestinian protests in 2024.

The Trump administration cited a 1952 law empowering the government to deport someone if their presence in the country posed unfavourable consequences for American foreign policy.

A judge in Louisiana said the Trump administration was allowed to move forward with its effort to deport Mr Khalil because the argument of "adverse foreign policy consequences" for the US is "facially reasonable".

In a recent open letter, Mr Khalil urged the US public to see that the country was "a democracy of convenience, and rights are granted to those who align with power."

His lawyers have told the BBC that they will continue to seek bail, as well as a preliminary injunction, to free him from custody.

His wife, Noor Abdalla, gave birth to their first child on Monday. She said Mr Khalil's application for a temporary release from the detention centre to attend the birth was declined.

"This was a purposeful decision by Ice to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer," Ms Abdalla said.

Ms Öztürk, a Turkish citizen, was detained on 25 March outside Boston, as she was walking to an Iftar meal to celebrate Ramadan. Masked, plain-clothes officers handcuffed and lead her to an unmarked car. The PhD student participated in pro-Palestinian protests as a legal US resident.

Last week the US District Court for the District of Vermont ruled that her challenge to her detention by Ice should continue in Vermont and the government should transfer her back to a facility in Vermont no later than 1 May. The court also set a bail hearing for 9 May.

The two students are among the most high-profile detainees to be arrested since Trump returned to office. The congressional delegation that visited the Louisiana facility also spoke of other detainees, including Wendy Brito, a New Orleans mother who has lived in the US for over 15 years, and another woman who they said was six months pregnant.

Legal teams for both students allege that choosing a Louisiana jail was a deliberate attempt to keep them away from their homes.

A statement Tuesday from the Democrats accuses the Trump administration of "ripping individuals from their communities and shipping them to jurisdictions more favorable to the Trump administration's deportation agenda".

They argue that the government moved Ms Öztürk to Louisiana in "an attempt to hand-pick the courts that will decide her case", instead of lack of bed space in her home state as it claimed.

The statement demands that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and the acting director of Ice, Todd Lyons, answer questions about the decision to move her.