Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri released after months in ICE detention

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the release of Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University who was arrested in March and targeted for deportation by the Trump administration. 

Judge Patricia Giles said in her ruling that Khan Suri’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention was in violation of his First Amendment right to free speech and his Fifth Amendment right to due process. Khan Suri has been held in the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas.  

His wife, Maphaz Ahmad Yousef, said that hearing the judge’s words “brought tears to my eyes.” 

“I wish I could give her a heartfelt hug,” Yousef said at a news conference. 

ACLU attorney Sophia Gregg said the case was about more than the release of Khan Suri. “Americans don’t want to live in a country where the federal government disappears people whose views it doesn’t like,” she said at the news conference. “If they can do this to Dr. Suri, they can do this to anyone.” 

Khan Suri’s attorneys had filed a petition that sought to determine whether his detainment was lawful, known as a habeas corpus petition. He was sent to Texas after first being detained overnight at a Virginia facility, and then transferred to Louisiana due to a lack of space in Virginia, according to court documents. 

The government last month filed a motion to move the case out of Virginia, arguing that the habeas petition must be filed where the petitioner is detained. Giles denied that motion, citing the lack of clarity as to where Khan Suri actually was when the petition was filed.

Khan Suri, who has been a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown for the past three years, was accused by the Department of Homeland Security of “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.”

Khan Suri “has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on X.

Yousef, an American citizen who is originally from Gaza, is also a student at Georgetown. Her father, Ahmed Yousef, is a former adviser to now-deceased Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. In an interview with The New York Times, Ahmed Yousef said he left his position more than a decade ago. He has also been outspoken in his criticism of Hamas.

According to court documents, Khan Suri met his father-in-law in person for the first and only time in 2013 to ask for his blessing to marry Maphaz Ahmad Yousef. Since getting married, Khan Suri has spoken to Ahmed Yousef from time to time about “family matters and his academic pursuits,” the documents said. But since the entire family moved to the U.S. in 2023, Khan Suri has not spoken directly to his father-in-law. 

Maphaz Ahmad Yousef, who’s lost several family members in the war in Gaza, has posted information about the events occurring there, court documents say.

“On not more than a handful of occasions, Dr. Khan Suri also made social media posts expressing support for the Palestinian people, criticizing the death toll in Gaza, affirming international law principles, and criticizing U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza,” the documents said. 

Khan Suri says he has never attended any protests. 

“I came to the U.S. to work and raise my family: I go to work, come home late, and still they came and took me and broke my family,” Khan Suri said in a news release. “In my work, I’ve seen lots of injustice. I just didn’t think it would happen to me here.”

Khan Suri’s attorney Hassan Ahmad previously told NBC News that Khan Suri has never made any pro-Hamas or antisemitic comments, calling his detention “contemptible.”

Khan Suri’s habeas petition also described the conditions in the detention center. When first arriving in Texas, the documents said, Suri wasn’t assigned to a bed in a dorm and was instead put in the facility’s “TV room,” where the television runs every day from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m, the petition said. Khan Suri had also requested religious accommodations, the petition said, and only received halal food after five days. 

“On April 2, officers came and told him that he had complained through his lawyer about his religious accommodations and asked him for more details. After Dr. Khan Suri reaffirmed his needs, he was given a prayer mat, a Quran, and provided a space on a bed in the dorm, outside of the TV room.” 

While detained, Khan Suri was issued a bright red uniform, usually reserved for individuals classified as high security due to their criminal history, the petition said. When he asked about his uniform, Khan Suri was told that he fell under the category due to his association “with a known criminal group — presumably based on Respondents’ unfounded claims of his connections to Hamas,” the petition said. 

“Due to his classification and security protocols at the facility, Dr. Khan Suri is only permitted two hours per week of recreation,” the petition said.