Georgetown University student, whose father-in-law worked with Hamas authorities in Gaza, released from US immigration detention

A Georgetown University scholar from India who was arrested in the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign college students is released from immigration detention after a federal judge’s ruling.

Badar Khan Suri will go home to his family in Virginia while he awaits the outcome of his petition against the Trump administration for wrongful arrest and detention in violation of the First Amendment and other constitutional rights. He is also facing deportation proceedings in an immigration court in Texas.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Khan Suri tells reporters after his release from a detention facility in Alvarado, near Dallas. “It took two months, but I’m extremely thankful that finally I’m free.”

Khan Suri was arrested by masked, plain-clothed officers on the evening of March 17 outside his apartment complex in Arlington, Virginia. He was then put on a plane to Louisiana and later to a detention center in Texas.

Khan Suri’s attorneys say he and his wife, Mapheze Saleh, have been targeted because Saleh’s father worked with the Hamas-backed Gazan government for more than a decade, but before terror group attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The Trump administration has said that it revoked Khan Suri’s visa 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 US has designated as a terrorist organization.

According to the US government, Khan Suri has undisputed family ties to the terrorist organization, which he “euphemistically refers to as ‘the government of Gaza.’” But the American Civil Liberties Union has said that Khan Suri hardly knew the father, Ahmed Yousef.