By
UPDATE (March 20, 2025, 5:14 p.m. ET): A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled Thursday that Badar Khan Suri “shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court issues a contrary order.”
Federal immigration authorities are seeking to deport a Georgetown University graduate student from India, accusing him of spreading Hamas propaganda online and of harboring ties to the U.S.-designated terror group.
Badar Khan Suri, who is in the U.S. on a student visa, was arrested Monday night outside his home in Arlington, Virginia, by agents who said they were with the Department of Homeland Security, his lawyer Hassan Ahmad told NBC News.
Ahmad has filed a habeas petition on Suri’s behalf seeking his release from a Louisiana detention facility, where he is currently being held.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, claimed in a post on X that Suri was “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” and that he “has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.”
The department has not presented details about its allegations against Suri or evidence that he committed any crime, his lawyer said in the petition. Suri has not been charged and has no criminal record, according to Ahmad.
Georgetown has said that it is not aware of any illegal activity on Suri’s part and that it has not been informed of a reason for his detention.
McLaughlin said Secretary of State Marco Rubio deemed Suri “deportable” under the same provision that the administration has invoked in its attempt to remove Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. permanent resident, from the country.
According to Politico, which first reported Suri’s arrest, Ahmad argued in the petition that Suri is being punished because his wife, a U.S. citizen, is of Palestinian heritage, and because the administration suspects them of opposing U.S. foreign policy toward Israel. The petition also states that Suri’s wife previously worked for Al Jazeera and has been accused of having “ties with Hamas.” (Politico obtained a physical copy of the petition, which is not publicly available and has not been reviewed by MSNBC or NBC News.)
Ahmad told The New York Times that although he is still looking into the case, he believed the accusations are connected to Suri’s father-in-law, who the Times reported is a former adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ late political chief. Suri’s father-in-law, who lives in Gaza, told the Times that he left his position in the Hamas government more than a decade ago. He also told the Times that Suri is not involved in any political activism, including on Hamas’ behalf.
According to his profile on the university’s website, Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He has a doctorate in peace and conflict studies from the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi.
The Trump administration has sought to detain and deport a number of noncitizens, characterizing them as Hamas sympathizers for their public opposition to Israel’s military assault on Gaza and United States’ support for Israel. Civil rights advocates have said the administration is targeting legal immigrants based on their political views, in violation of their First Amendment rights.