Georgetown researcher released from immigration detention on federal judge’s order

Georgetown University researcher Badar Khan Suri has been released from an immigration detention center in Texas, after a federal judge ordered the government to free him immediately.

The postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, who is an Indian national, is now free to return to his home in Virginia while the legal challenge to his detention continues in court. Suri is also fighting the Trump administration’s attempt to deport him in a separate immigration case in Texas. His next immigration hearing in the Texas case is scheduled for June 3, according to Khan Suri’s legal team.

On his way out of the detention center in Texas, Suri said, “There was no charge, there was nothing. They made a sub human out of me,” NBC News reported.

Judge Patricia Giles of the Eastern District of Virginia said the government failed to offer up evidence supporting Suri’s detention, The New York Times reported. Giles said the government also failed to demonstrate that Suri was a threat to U.S. interests, according to the Times.

Suri, who was never charged with a crime, was detained at the Texas facility for two months, following his arrest by masked federal agents after he returned to his Virginia home on March 17. The agents informed him his visa had been revoked.

A DHS official said Suri had been detained for “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media. Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.” His lawyers denied the claims and said the government was retaliating against Suri for he and his wife’s support for Palestinians.

Suri’s wife is Palestinian American and his father-in-law, who lives in Gaza, had once advised a Hamas leader, The New York Times previously reported.

Suri is the latest scholar targeted by the Trump administration to be freed from detention. Just last Friday, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student and Turkish national, was released from federal custody in rural Louisiana after a judge in Vermont ordered the Trump administration to free her.