Judge: Georgetown Scholar Can Be Freed From Detention Center During Case

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered that a Georgetown scholar from India be released from immigration detention after he was detained in the Trump administration's crackdown on foreign college students.

Badar Khan Suri was arrested by masked, plainclothes officers on the evening of March 17 outside his apartment complex in Arlington, Virginia. Officials said his visa was revoked because of his social media posts and his wife's connection to Gaza as a Palestinian American. They accused him of supporting Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization.

By the time Khan Suri's petition was filed, authorities had already put him on a plane to Louisiana without allowing him to update his family or lawyer, Khan Suri's attorneys said. A few days later, he was moved again to Texas.

Before Wednesday's hearing, U.S. attorneys argued that Khan Suri's case should be moved from Virginia to Texas because the petition was filed after the scholar had already left the state. They said filing his case in Texas is a "relatively straightforward application of well-settled law."

The Trump administration said it quickly moved Khan Suri from a facility in Farmville, Virginia, because it was overcrowded, and a nearby detention center in Caroline County had "no available beds and only had limited emergency bedspace."

But the judge denied the government's request, observing in an opinion memo that after landing in Texas, Khan Suri had to sleep on a plastic cot on the floor of an overcrowded detention center in Texas, and according to his attorneys, he now sleeps on a bed in an overcrowded dormitory with about 50 other people.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles agreed with Khan Suri's attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued that it had appeared the real reason he was moved to Texas was to bring the case before a more conservative court.

The government's representations, Giles wrote, "are plainly inconsistent and are further undermined by the fact that Prairieland Detention Center, where [Khan Suri] is currently held, is overcrowded."

Khan Suri, an Indian citizen, came to the U.S. in 2022 through a J-1 visa, working at Georgetown as a visiting scholar and postdoctoral fellow. He and wife Saleh have three children: a 9-year-old son and 5-year-old twins.

Before his arrest, he taught a course on majority and minority human rights in South Asia, according to court records. The filings said he hoped to become a professor and embark on a career in academia.

The ACLU has argued that arrests on such grounds violated his constitutional rights.