Georgetown Uni. researcher detained by federal immigration officials

A researcher at Georgetown University was detained by federal immigration agents on Monday night.

Badar Khan Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s School of Service and teaches a course on “Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia” at the school’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. He was granted a visa to legally continue his studies in the U.S., the university told WTOP in a statement.

Khan Suri is an Indian national and completed his doctorate in New Delhi in 2020, according to his staff bio.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a post on X that Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.” She added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “issued a determination on March 15, 2025 that Suri’s activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable.”

Hassan Ahmad, Suri’s attorney, told CNN that his client is in Louisiana awaiting a hearing in immigration court and that he spoke to him on Wednesday night.

“I will say that seeing our government abduct and jail another innocent person is beyond contemptible,” Ahmad said in an email to CNN. “And if an accomplished scholar who focuses on conflict resolution is whom the government decides is bad for foreign policy, then perhaps the problem is with the government, not the scholar.”

Online court documents for Suri were not accessible as of Wednesday evening.

Politico first reported the news of Khan Suri’s detainment.

“We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention. 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. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly,” a university spokesperson told WTOP.

The move comes two weeks after a student activist from Columbia University in New York, Mahmoud Khalil, was detained by federal immigration agents for his involvement in pro-Palestinian campus rallies and encampments last year. President Donald Trump warned that Khalil’s arrest would be the first of “many to come” as his administration cracks down on anti-Israeli demonstrations held on college campuses around the country.

Josh Gerstein, the senior legal affairs reporter with Politico, spoke to WTOP’s Ian Crawford about the case.

Listen to the interview below.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Josh Gerstein: His name is Badur Suri and he was studying at Georgetown at their School of Foreign Service, also teaching a course over there. He’s said to be a peace and conflict studies researcher and a postdoctoral fellow there.

On Monday, he was apparently returning to his home in Rosslyn in Arlington, Virginia. According to his wife and the lawsuit, he was grabbed off the street, arrested by Homeland Security officers who are wearing masks. His wife said she could only see their eyes, and they eventually told him that he had had his researcher visa canceled, apparently because his activities were deemed incompatible with the foreign policy of the United States. So they took him away from there, and over the last two days, have moved him all the way to Louisiana. Obviously, that whole process is drawing parallels to what happened with that Columbia student a couple of weeks ago, who was taken from New York down to Louisiana by Homeland Security.

Ian Crawford: What else can you tell us about that petition for release that you had the chance to see?

Gerstein: Well, his lawyers are claiming that he’s being targeted because of what are believed to be his pro-Palestinian views — that’s how they describe it. But there’s another wrinkle here, which is that his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, appears to be the daughter of someone who served as a senior political adviser to the Hamas leadership. It’s not clear at the moment if he’s still in that capacity or served in that capacity in the past.

So there’s at least a semi-indirect family connection. We’ve seen a statement from DHS that alleges that Suri has “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist who is a senior adviser to Hamas.” And I think that is referring to his father-in-law. And this statement confirms that Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a determination a few days ago that this individual’s visa should be canceled, as I mentioned, for activities deemed incompatible with the foreign policy of the United States.

Crawford: Do we know where he’s being held and where he may be headed next?

Gerstein: They may be trying to deport him. He was supposedly told that he was being taken to Texas, but the last indication we’ve seen from online databases, from immigration and custom enforcement, is that he’s being held at a facility in Louisiana that is often used for flying people that are in immigration custody around the country.

I’m not clear on whether they’re going to try to deport him from there — and there probably will now be a fight, because this lawsuit was filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, but Suri is now down in Louisiana — or whether further litigation over this case should take place up here or down there.

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