WASHINGTON: A federal judge ordered President Donald Trump\u2019s administration not to deport Badar Khan Suri, an Indian man studying at Washington\u2019s Georgetown University whose lawyer has said the United States was seeking to remove him after it accused him of harming US foreign policy.
\nThe order is to remain in effect until lifted by the court, according to the three-paragraph order by US District Judge Patricia Giles in Alexandria, Virginia.
\nThe Department of Homeland Security has accused Badar Khan Suri of ties to the Palestinian militant group Hamas and said he had spread Hamas propaganda and antisemitism on social media. On March 15, Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined Suri could be deported for those activities, according to DHS.
\nSuri is living in the US on a student visa and is married to an American citizen and has been detained in Alexandria, Louisiana, according to his lawyer. He is awaiting a court date in immigration court, his lawyer said.
\nFederal agents arrested him outside his home in Rosslyn, Virginia, on Monday night. The lawyer welcomed Thursday\u2019s ruling and called it \u201cthe first bit of due process Dr. Khan Suri has received since he was snatched from his family Monday night.\u201d
\nThe American Civil Liberties Union also defended Suri and said he was \u201ctransferred to multiple immigration detention centers\u201d before being taken to Alexandria, Louisiana.
\nDHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday\u2019s court order.
\nThe case comes as Trump seeks to deport foreigners who took part in pro-Palestinian protests against US ally Israel\u2019s war in Gaza following an October 2023 Hamas attack. Trump\u2019s measures have sparked outcry from civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups who accuse his administration of unfairly targeting political critics by invoking rarely used laws.
\nSuri is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown\u2019s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which is part of the university\u2019s School of Foreign Service.
\nSuri\u2019s wife, Mapheze Saleh, is a US citizen, said his lawyer. Saleh is from Gaza, according to the Georgetown University website, which said she has written for Al Jazeera and Palestinian media outlets and worked with the foreign ministry in Gaza. Saleh has not been arrested, the lawyer added.
\nThe lawyer had said on Wednesday Suri was being targeted for his wife\u2019s Palestinian heritage and for his own pro-Palestinian views.
\nSome media outlets, including the Washington Post, reported that Ahmed Yousef, the father of Suri\u2019s wife, was a former political adviser to Hamas. Yousef had also written for some Western publications like The Guardian.
\nEarlier this month, the Trump administration arrested and sought to deport Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil over his participation in pro-Palestinian protests. Khalil was moved to Louisiana and is challenging his detention in court.
\nTrump, without evidence, has accused Khalil of supporting Hamas. Khalil\u2019s legal team says he has no links to the militant group that the US designates as a \u201cforeign terrorist organization.\u201d
\nTrump has alleged pro-Palestinian protesters are antisemitic. Pro-Palestinian advocates, including some Jewish groups, say that their criticism of Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza and their support for Palestinian rights are wrongly conflated with antisemitism by their critics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: A federal judge ordered President Donald Trump\u2019s administration not to deport Badar Khan Suri, an Indian man studying at Washington\u2019s Georgetown University whose lawyer has said the United States was seeking to remove him after it accused him of harming US foreign policy. The order is to remain in effect until lifted by the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78695,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78686\/revisions\/78695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}