Trump Is Seeking to Deport Another Academic Who Is Legally in the Country, Lawsuit Says

A Georgetown University researcher, who was studying and teaching on a student visa, has been detained by federal immigration authorities amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on student activists whom the government accuses of opposing American foreign policy, according to court papers.

Masked agents arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral fellow, outside his home in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, on Monday night, his lawyer said in a lawsuit fighting for his immediate release. The agents identified themselves as being with the Department of Homeland Security and told him the government had revoked his visa, the lawsuit says.

According to Suri’s petition for release, he was put in deportation proceedings under the same rarely used provision of immigration law that the government has invoked to try to deport Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student and green card holder who led pro-Palestinian protests on campus. That provision gives the secretary of State the power to deport noncitizens if the secretary determines that their continued presence in the U.S. would threaten foreign policy.

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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 detention is the latest in a string of immigration-related arrests that Trump says are just beginning to ramp up. The arrests, Trump says, target “terrorist sympathizers” or people who have “engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.” But advocates for these detainees say Trump is violating the First Amendment by retaliating against noncitizens — including people in the country legally — based on their political views and free speech.

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