A Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow from India who has been studying and teaching in the U.S. under a student visa has been detained by federal authorities because of alleged connections between his wife and Hamas, the Iranian-backed terrorist group.
The arrest of Badar Khan Suri of Georgetown’s Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding came amid a broader crackdown by the Trump administration on U.S. college and university student and faculty organizers with links to pro-Palestinian activism, Politico reported Wednesday. Khan Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh, is a U.S. citizen and Georgetown graduate student with Palestinian heritage.
Khan Suri was arrested Monday night outside his home in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, his attorney, Hassan Ahmad, a Northern Virginia immigration lawyer and advocate, said in a lawsuit fighting for his immediate release, according to Politico. The federal agents identified themselves as being with the Department of Homeland Security and told Khan Suri the government had revoked his visa.
According to the petition for release, filed in federal court in Virginia, Khan Suri was put in deportation proceedings under the same provision of immigration law that the government invoked to try to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and green card holder who has been accused of leading violent anti-Israel protests on campus. That provision gives Secretary of State Marco Rubio power to deport noncitizens if he determines that their continued presence in the U.S. would threaten foreign policy.
Khalil was arrested March 8 at his New York residence and moved to a detention center in New Jersey before being moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, Louisiana.
Ahmad’s petition stated that Khan Suri has no criminal record and has not been charged with a crime, Politico reported. Ahmad argued that Suri is being punished because of his wife's Palestinian heritage because the government suspects that he and his wife oppose U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.
The petition stated that Khan Suri’s wife has been alleged to have “ties with Hamas” and once worked for Al Jazeera. A 2018 article about the couple published in the Hindustan Times, an Indian newspaper, said Saleh’s father, Ahmed Yousef, served as a “senior political adviser to the Hamas leadership.”
In the article, Saleh said, “For Palestinians Hamas is a political party fighting for the cause of Palestine, not a terrorist organization."
The departments of State and Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Politico to requests for comment.
Ahmad told Politico he had not been able to contact Khan Suri as of Wednesday night.
“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.”
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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