Indian scholar at georgetown university detained over ‘hamas ties’ amid trump’s crackdown on pro palestine protests

Indian scholar at georgetown university detained over ‘hamas ties’ amid trump’s crackdown on pro palestine protests

An Indian researcher at Georgetown University, Badar Khan Suri, has been detained by US immigration authorities days after another Indian national’s student visa was cancelled over accusations of supporting Hamas.

According to a report in Politico that cited court documents, the US government has accused Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral fellow, of allegedly having connections with Hamas — a Palestinian group that the US and several other Western countries have designated as a terrorist organisation.

This comes just days after the student visa of Columbia University student Ranjani Srinivasan was revoked by the Donald Trump administration. On March 11, Srinivasan chose to “self deport” fearing arrest by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Srinivasan’s case had drawn widespread attention as part of a broader crackdown by the Trump administration on pro-Palestine student demonstrators. Over the last one week, action has been taken against several students and activists who participated in pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University and other US campuses in the spring of 2024.

US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a determination on Saturday that Suri’s visa should be cancelled for foreign policy reasons. Suri is married to an American citizen with a Palestinian heritage.

“Suri was a foreign exchange student at Georgetown University actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” McLaughlin wrote on X. “Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.”

Suri is a researcher with a post-doctoral fellowship at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He did his PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies from the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia in 2020.

As per reports, masked agents arrested Suri outside his home in the Rosslyn neighbourhood of Arlington, Virginia, on Monday night. The agents identified themselves as being with the Department of Homeland Security and told him the government had revoked his visa.

According to Suri’s petition for release, as per reports, Suri was put in deportation proceedings under a rarely used provision of immigration law that the Trump administration invoked last week to try to deport Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student and Green Card-holder who led pro-Palestine protests on campus.

As per the petition filed by Suri’s lawyer, he has no criminal record and has not been charged with a crime. Suri’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, argued that Suri is being punished because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife — a US citizen — and because the government suspects that he and his wife oppose US foreign policy toward Israel.

Suri is currently being held in Alexandria, Louisiana, while he waits for his court appearance in immigration court, according to news agency Reuters.