ST. PAUL, MN — A graduate business student from the University of Minnesota who is being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is fighting to be freed right away. He says that his arrest violated his rights and that he hasn’t been given much information about why he’s being held.
This week, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of 28-year-old Turkish citizen Doğukan Günaydın. It says that on Thursday, he was stopping in the street in front of his St. Paul home when he was stopped by two unmarked federal police.
His petition says that a guy in a hooded sweatshirt grabbed him and handcuffed him, making him think that he was being kidnapped.
The lawsuit partly agrees with a statement made Monday by the Department of Homeland Security, which said that he was stopped because he had a record for drunk driving. The government agency said he wasn’t being held because he was involved in politics. According to his petition, Günaydın has not been to any protests and has not written any writings that are political.
Hannah Brown, his lawyer, did not answer right away to texts Tuesday asking for comment, and neither did officials in the Justice Department nor the State Department in Washington, D.C.
Federal officials have been asked to explain themselves by elected officials in Minnesota, such as Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.
Walz tweeted, “Taking students who come here legally to work hard and go to school does not make you tough on immigration.” “We need to know.”
Günaydın was in the U.S. with a student visa until Thursday, when the Department of Homeland Security took it away. The letter says that what was done was against the law. It says he was held for several hours after being arrested and not told why. The only reason given was that his F-1 student visa was “retroactively revoked.”
But the petition points to online records that show his student visa wasn’t revoked until about seven hours after he was arrested. The only reason given was “otherwise failing to maintain status.” This is because of laws that say an alien can be deported if they don’t maintain the immigration status that brought them to the U.S. or if their presence in the U.S. “would have potentially adverse foreign policy consequences.”
The plea says that the government has not shown any of these legal reasons to take away his student visa. A DHS list of reasons for termination is used to show that a state of driving while drunk is not a legal one.
His petition says that Günaydın was arrested on June 27, 2023, for driving while drunk, but it also says that he admitted guilt, did his time, and followed all the rules of his release. He only got a speeding ticket in 2021 while he was a student at St. Olaf College in Northfield, and that’s the only crime he’s been jailed for.
As the petition says, Günaydın was accepted into the university’s Carlson School of Business, given a scholarship, and kept up a full course load while maintaining a good grade-point average.
His lawyer wrote, “Importantly, Mr. Günaydın has committed no crime that would cause his Student Status to be terminated or that would make him deportable.”
Günaydın was arrested and taken to the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, which also houses federal prisoners. There, he was told he would have a hearing with an immigration judge on April 8, but his petition says that as of the date of the lawsuit, he hadn’t been given any kind of charging document or hearing notice.
His lawyer wrote, “Mr. Günaydın and counsel remain in the dark about the reason for his detention without a charging document.”
The plea asks the court to free Günaydın right away, say that his arrest and continued detention were illegal, and let him go back to being a student.
His lawyer wrote, “Even if he is eventually freed, as long as Doğukan remains in ICE’s physical custody, he will not be able to speak freely and openly, and his unlawful detention will serve to chill others.”
Based on records from the state courts, Günaydın was caught in Minneapolis in 2023 after a police officer saw him driving in a strange way. An early breath test showed that he had 0.20% alcohol in his blood, which is much higher than the legal limit of 0.08%. After almost 90 minutes, a breath test in jail showed a 0.17% alcohol level.
He admitted to a gross misdemeanor charge of driving while drunk, got credit for four days spent in jail, and was told to do one day of community service instead of going to jail again. He had to pay $528 in fines and court fees.
Günaydın and his lawyer both signed the document that accepted his guilty plea. In it, he said that he knew that as a noncitizen, his guilty plea could lead to deportation.
