US Immigration Authorities Detain Pro-Palestine Georgetown Researcher, Seek Deportation

Washington (Quds News Network) – The Trump administration has detained an Indian researcher who was studying and teaching at Georgetown University on a student visa, intending to deport him after labeling him as a threat to U.S. foreign policy due to his and his wife’s support for Palestinian rights.

Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral fellow, was arrested outside his home in Arlington, Virginia, by masked agents on Monday night, according to his lawyer, who filed a lawsuit seeking his immediate release, according to POLITICO.

The agents said they were from the Department of Homeland Security and informed Suri that his visa had been revoked, as stated in the lawsuit.

Suri’s petition for release reveals that he was placed under deportation proceedings based on a rarely used immigration law provision, similar to the one used against Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student also targeted for his pro-Palestine activism. This provision grants the Secretary of State the authority to deport noncitizens if their presence is deemed a threat to foreign policy.

Suri has no criminal record and has not been charged with any crime, his petition asserts.

Suri’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, argued that the detention is tied to the Palestinian heritage of Suri’s wife, a U.S. citizen, and the government’s belief that they oppose U.S. foreign policy regarding Israel.

The petition highlights that the couple has been “doxxed and smeared” on 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 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.

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.”

This follows a broader campaign by the Trump administration to suppress any pro-Palestine speech.

On March 8, Khalil, the Columbia University graduate who is a permanent resident of the US, was detained by ICE agents when he arrived at his home at a student resident facility with his pregnant wife over his activism as he played a key role in pro-Palestine and anti-genocide demonstrations on campus. He acted as a negotiator with university officials during protests for Palestine in the spring of 2024.

The agents said they planned to revoke his green card at the behest of the US Department of State.

The State Department also announced its plans to use AI to revoke the visas of pro-Palestine foreign students, labeling them “pro-Hamas”.

Following Khalil’s arrest, Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X that the US would “be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported”.

In a post on Truth Social, US President Donald Trump described the arrest of Khalil as “the first arrest of many to come”.

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said.

Columbia University also lost $400 million in federal funding after being named on a list of schools accused of failure to address antisemitism. 60 universities could also face funding cuts if federal investigations show evidence that they have permitted antisemitic behavior.

As he campaigned for a second term in the White House, Trump pledged to stop the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that erupted after Israel launched its deadly war on Gaza and deport any foreign students involved.

Upon taking office, he began to issue executive actions signalling he would carry out his threats.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said in a White House fact sheet.

“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”