By OLIVIA DIAZ, Related Press/Report for America
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A federal choose on Wednesday ordered {that a} Georgetown scholar from India be launched from immigration detention after he was detained within the Trump administration’s crackdown on overseas faculty college students.
Badar Khan Suri was arrested by masked, plain-clothed officers on the night of March 17 exterior his condominium complicated in Arlington, Virginia. Officers mentioned his visa was revoked due to his social media posts and his spouse’s connection to Gaza as a Palestinian American. They accused him of supporting Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist group.
By the point Khan Suri’s petition was filed, authorities had already put him on a airplane to Louisiana with out permitting him to replace his household or lawyer, Khan Suri’s attorneys mentioned. Just a few days later, he was moved once more to Texas.
Earlier than Wednesday’s listening to, U.S. attorneys argued that Khan Suri’s case ought to be moved from Virginia to Texas as a result of the petition was filed after the scholar had already left the state. They mentioned submitting his case in Texas is a “relatively straightforward application of well-settled law.”
The Trump administration mentioned it rapidly moved Khan Suri from a facility in Farmville, Virginia, as a result of it was overcrowded and a close-by detention heart in Caroline County had “no available beds and only had limited emergency bedspace.”
However the choose denied the federal government’s request, observing in an opinion memo that after touchdown in Texas, Khan Suri needed to sleep on a plastic cot on the ground of an overcrowded detention heart in Texas and, based on his attorneys, he now sleeps on a mattress in an overcrowded dormitory with about 50 different folks.
U.S. District Decide Patricia Tolliver Giles agreed with Khan Suri’s attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued that it had appeared the actual purpose he was moved to Texas was to convey the case earlier than a extra conservative court docket.
The federal government’s representations, Giles wrote, “are plainly inconsistent and are further undermined by the fact that Prairieland Detention Center, where Petitioner (Khan Suri) is currently held, is overcrowded.”
Khan Suri, an Indian citizen, got here to the U.S. in 2022 by means of a J-1 visa, working at Georgetown as a visiting scholar and postdoctoral fellow. He and spouse Saleh have three kids: a 9-year-old son and 5-year-old twins.
Earlier than his arrest, he taught a course on majority and minority human rights in South Asia, based on court docket information. The filings mentioned he hoped to turn into a professor and embark on a profession in academia.
The ACLU has argued that arrests on such grounds violated his constitutional rights.
Initially Revealed: Could 14, 2025 at 1:33 PM EDT
