Trump Administration Arrests Georgetown University Postdoctoral Fellow

The Trump administration on Wednesday defended the detention of a Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow by immigration agents.

Badar Khan Suri, an Indian citizen who entered the U.S. on a J-1 student visa, was arrested by masked agents with the Department of Homeland Security outside his home in Arlington, Virginia, on Monday evening, according to a lawsuit obtained by Politico. The agents claimed his visa had been revoked.

The court papers filed by Hassan Ahmad, Suri’s attorney, allege that he has not been charged with any crime and has no criminal record, according to Politico, which was first to report the story.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokesperson, accused Suri of having “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas,” without citing evidence to support the claim.

“Suri was a foreign exchange student at Georgetown University actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” McLaughlin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

McLaughlin added that Suri is deemed “deportable” under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the U.S. secretary of state power to deport a person who he “has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” based on their presence and activities in the country.

Ahmad challenged the contents of McLaughlin’s statement, telling The New York Times that Suri was targeted “seemingly based on who his father-in-law was.”

Ahmed Yousef, the father of Suri’s wife, served as an adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed by an airstrike in Iran last year, according to the Times. Yousef told the Times he left the position over a decade ago and does not hold a senior role with the group, adding that Suri has never been a political activist. Yousef has previously called Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel a “terrible error.”

Suri’s wife, a U.S. citizen who is a graduate student at Georgetown, has served as a contributing writer for Al Jazeera and multiple Palestinian outlets and worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Gaza, according to a bio statement listed on the university’s website. She has not been detained, Suri’s lawyer said.

Georgetown University said Suri, who completed his Ph.D. at a university in New Delhi in 2020, entered the country legally to pursue doctoral research on peace-building in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention,” the university said in a statement. “We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable.”

Suri is being held at a detention facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement online detainee locator system.

Beside conducting research, Suri appeared to also be teaching a course at Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

Joel Hellman, the dean of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, to which Suri belongs, said the fellow “has been focused on completing his research,” in an email to the department’s faculty members obtained by The Hoya, Georgetown’s student paper.

“Like many in our community, Badar has been exercising his constitutionally protected rights to express his views on the war in the Middle East,” Hellman wrote. “Georgetown has consistently protected such freedoms within the context of our longstanding Speech and Expression Policy.”

Suri’s detention follows the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and recent Columbia University graduate, outside his university-owned apartment on Saturday over his role in student protests of Israel’s war in Gaza. Khalil, a green card holder who is challenging the government’s efforts to deport him, has called himself “a political prisoner” of the U.S. government.

President Donald Trump had labeled Khalil “a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student,” with no evidence, calling his detention “the first arrest of many to come.”