On March 17, 2025, the US Department of Homeland Security detained Badar Khan Suri, a professor and postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service (SFS), in apparent retaliation for unspecified free expression activities.
Suri, an Indian national with legal work authorization in the US, is a scholar of peace and conflict studies. He was conducting postdoctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan at SFS’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). He had been in the US since 2022 on a J-1 visa, which permits foreign scholars and professionals to work for US employers, and is married to a US citizen. Suri’s father-in-law was a political advisor ten years ago to Ismail Haniyah, a leader of Hamas killed by Israeli forces in July 2024.
Suri was arrested outside of his home in Arlington, VA, and, as of March 24, was being held at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana. On March 20, a federal judge in Virginia ordered that the US government could not deport Suri prior to the outcome of an immigration hearing that will take place in Los Fresnos, Texas on May 6.
The US administration alleged, without evidence, that Suri was responsible for “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.” Suri has not been charged with a crime and has no criminal history. He is being held under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that grants the US secretary of state the power to deport any individual whose presence in the US poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” (This is the same section used to justify the government’s detention a week earlier of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil (see report).)
Scholars at Risk is concerned about the arrest, detention, and attempt to revoke the legal residence and work authorization of a scholar in retaliation for his exercise of the right of free expression. Authorities have an obligation to refrain from sanctioning or otherwise retaliating against individuals based on their nonviolent expressive activity and must ensure that any legal or immigration procedures follow due process. The use of the justice or immigration systems to punish nonviolent expression undermines academic freedom and democratic society generally.
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/03/19/trump-deportation-georgetown-fellow-immigration/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/us/politics/georgetown-suri-detained.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-deportation-georgetown-graduate-student-00239754
https://thehoya.com/news/developing-gu-researcher-detained-by-immigration-agents/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/detained-georgetown-university-grad-student-never-made-hamas-statement-rcna197405
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/judge-bars-trump-administration-deporting-pro-palestinian-student-2025-03-20/
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/21/nx-s1-5336173/immigration-georgetown-university-professor
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8rk62znm3yo
https://sfs.georgetown.edu/news-deans-statement-on-detention-of-dr-badar-suri/