A federal judge has blocked the deportation of Indian academic Badar Khan Suri, who was arrested by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents on March 17 after his student visa was revoked.
Accepting an appeal on his behalf, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, on March 21, ordered that Suri cannot be deported without a court order. Suri is currently being held in a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Louisiana.
Palestinian rights activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested by ICE earlier this month, is also being held in Louisiana. Notably, Louisiana, in the American South, is considered to be among the states with the most conservative courts in the country—a factor the Trump administration is likely relying on.
Suri holds a PhD from New Delhi’s Jamia Millia University and was a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University in Washington, teaching a course on ‘Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia’.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin accused Suri of “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.” She also claimed that “Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas”—a reference to his wife’s father, Ahmed Yousef.
However, Suri’s lawyer reportedly argued in court that his client is being targeted for deportation because he is married to a Palestinian-American and based solely on his “family ties to those who may have either expressed criticism of US foreign policy as it relates to Israel.”
According to reports, Suri’s father-in-law is a former adviser to slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh, told the court that her father had lived in the US for close to 20 years while pursuing his Master’s and then his PhD, BBC reports. She also stated that her father had served as a political advisor to the Prime Minister of Gaza and as the deputy of Foreign Affairs in Gaza, the BBC further says.
Additionally, according to The Hindu, Suri’s lawyer described the arrest as a “targeted, retaliatory detention” intended “to silence” Suri and others who express support for Palestinian rights.
Meanwhile, Suri’s university department, the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), issued a statement saying, “At the precise moment Dr Khan Suri was arrested, Israel, after coordinating with the Trump administration, launched a brutal attack on the people of Gaza that, according to Amnesty International, killed at least 400 people, including 174 children. This event on March 17 is now known as ‘The Ramadan Massacre.’”
ACMCU added, “As it continues to enable genocide in Gaza, so too will the Trump administration expand its authoritarian weaponisation of the legal system to attack political speech that is protected by the First Amendment.”
Mapheze is pursuing her Master’s at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), a department at Georgetown University. According to her departmental profile, Mapheze worked as a researcher at the Qatar Embassy in New Delhi and served as Executive Director at Indo-Pal Foundation, an organization that advocates for Palestinian rights. She has also worked as a contributing writer for Middle East Monitor, Al Jazeera, and various Palestinian media outlets. Additionally, she has worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Gaza.
Suri is the second Indian to be swept up in US President Donald Trump’s campaign against pro-Palestine protests that have engulfed several universities across the US.
Ranjani Srinivasan, a PhD student at Columbia University in New York, was forced to leave the US for Canada on March 11 after her student visa was revoked. Ranjani was also accused of “supporting Hamas,” though the Trump administration has yet to provide any such evidence.
Inputs IANS
