Chicago Thursday, May 15, 2025
Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral researcher at Georgetown University and an Indian national, has been released from immigration detention in Texas following an order from a federal judge who demanded his immediate release. Suri is now allowed to return to his home in Virginia while he continues to contest his detention in court. He is also involved in a separate immigration case in Texas, where the government is attempting to deport him. His next hearing in that case is set for June 3, according to his legal team.
Upon leaving the detention center, Suri told that he had not been charged with any crime and felt dehumanized by the experience. Judge Patricia Giles of the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the government had not provided any evidence to justify his detention or prove that he posed a threat to national security.
Suri had been held for two months following his arrest by masked federal agents at his Virginia home on March 17, who claimed his visa had been revoked. A Department of Homeland Security official alleged that Suri was spreading Hamas propaganda and antisemitic content online and had ties to a known or suspected terrorist associated with Hamas. However, Suri’s legal team denied these allegations, asserting that the detention was in retaliation for his and his wife’s public support for Palestinians.
Suri’s wife is a Palestinian American, and his father-in-law,who lives in Gaza, was once an advisor to a Hamas leader, according to previous reporting by The New York Times. Suri is among several academics who have recently been targeted by the Trump administration. Just days earlier, another scholar, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national and doctoral student at Tufts University, was released from detention in Louisiana after a federal judge in Vermont ordered her release.
