A Georgetown University researcher, who was studying and teaching on a student visa, has been detained by federal immigration authorities amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on student activists whom the government accuses of opposing American foreign policy, according to court papers.
Masked agents arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral fellow, outside his home in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, on Monday night, his lawyer said in a lawsuit fighting for his immediate release. The agents identified themselves as being with the Department of Homeland Security and told him the government had revoked his visa, the lawsuit says.
According to Suri’s petition for release, he was put in deportation proceedings under the same rarely used provision of immigration law that the government has invoked to try to deport Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student and green card holder who led pro-Palestinian protests on campus. That provision gives the secretary of State the power to deport noncitizens if the secretary determines that their continued presence in the U.S. would threaten foreign policy.
Suri has no criminal record and has not been charged with a crime, his petition says. His detention and petition have not been previously reported.
Suri’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, argued in his petition that Suri is being punished because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife — who is a U.S. citizen — and because the government suspects that he and his wife oppose U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.
The petition says the couple has “long been doxxed and smeared” on anonymously run, far-right websites due to their support for Palestinian rights. The petition also says that Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh, has been alleged to have “ties with Hamas” and once worked for Al Jazeera.
A 2018 article about the couple published in the Hindustan Times, an Indian newspaper, said Saleh’s father, Ahmed Yousef, served as a “senior political adviser to the Hamas leadership.”
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a determination on Saturday that Suri’s visa should be canceled for foreign policy reasons.
“Suri was a foreign exchange student at Georgetown University actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” McLaughlin wrote on X. “Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.”
Ahmad said in an interview that he had not been able to contact Suri as of Wednesday evening.
“We’re trying to speak with him. That hasn’t happened yet,” Ahmad said. “This is just another example of our government abducting people the same way they abducted Khalil.”
Suri’s detention is the latest in a string of immigration-related arrests that Trump says are just beginning to ramp up. The arrests, Trump says, target “terrorist sympathizers” or people who have “engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.” But advocates for these detainees say Trump is violating the First Amendment by retaliating against noncitizens — including people in the country legally — based on their political views and free speech.
Suri’s lawsuit was filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Tuesday. As is typical for petitions seeking “habeas corpus,” or release from unlawful detention, the court papers were not available on the court’s online docket. POLITICO obtained a paper copy of Suri’s petition from the court.
As of Wednesday evening, no judge had been assigned to Suri’s case, and the court had not taken any action on it.
Suri’s petition said he was taken to a facility in Virginia and expected to be transferred soon to a detention center in Texas. On Wednesday evening, an online locator for immigration detainees showed him at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement “staging” center at the Alexandria, Louisiana, airport.
In other high-profile immigration cases, the Trump administration has tried to urgently move forward with deportations before courts have time to intervene.
Ahmad said it’s unclear whether he will need to refile Suri’s petition for release in Louisiana, but said he is prepared “to do whatever we can to release our client from detention and afford him due process.”
According to his faculty page on Georgetown’s website, Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which is part of the university’s School of Foreign Service. According to his court petition and a university directory, he is teaching a class this semester on “Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia.” Suri has a Ph.D. in peace and conflict studies from a university in India.
“Dr. Khan Suri is an Indian national who was duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan,” a Georgetown spokesperson said in a statement. “We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention. We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly.”
