A federal judge has blocked the deportation of Indian academic Badar Khan Suri who was detained by US immigration authorities after his student visa was revoked.
Accepting an appeal on his behalf, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles on Thursday ordered that Suri, now held in a detention facility in Louisiana, cannot be deported without a court order.
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Suri has a PhD from New Delhi’s Jamia Milia University and was a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University in Washington teaching a course on “Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia”.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin accused him of disseminating “Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism on social media”.
She said that he “has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas” — a reference to his wife’s father, Ahmed Yousef.
But his lawyer wrote in his court filing that he was being targeted for deportation because he is married to a Palestinian-American based solely on his “family ties to those who may have either expressed criticism of US foreign policy as it relates to Israel”.
A Georgetown University statement said, “We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention”.
According to a university website, Suri’s wife Mapheze Saleh, who is studying for a master’s in Arab Studies, has worked for “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Gaza” and has written for Middle East Monitor, Qatar government TV network Al Jazeera, and Palestinian media.
Suri is the second Indian to be swept up in President Donald Trump’s campaign against pro-Palestine protests that engulfed several universities across the US.
In some cases, the protests veered into anti-Semitism and support for Hamas.
Ranjani Srinivasan, a PhD student at Columbia University in New York, fled to Canada earlier this month, effectively self-deporting herself after immigration officers said her student visa was cancelled and went looking for her.
Suri’s lawyer said in his filing that on Monday Homeland Security agents, who had their faces covered, stopped him outside his residence in a Washington suburb and took him away.
He was taken to a detention centre in Farmville, Virginia, before being sent to Louisiana.
His lawyers want him moved to a facility closer to his home while the case proceeds.
Mapheze Saleh, who is a US citizen, holds a master’s degree from Jamia Milia University and worked at the Qatar Embassy in New Delhi, according to Georgetown University.
