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A Virginia federal judge has ordered the immediate release of Georgetown academic Badar Khan Suri from Ice detention during a hearing on Wednesday.
Khan Suri was among several individuals legally studying in the US who have been targeted by the Trump administration for their pro-Palestinian activism. He has spent two months in detention.
US district judge Patricia Giles in Alexandria, Virginia, said that the ruling was effective immediately with no conditions and no bond. She added that Khan Suri’s release was “in the public interest to disrupt the chilling effect on protected speech” during the hearing. The judge explained in her ruling how the government did not submit sufficient evidence on several of its claims.
A large crowd of demonstrators outside the courthouse reportedly cheered upon hearing the news of the ruling.
The Trump administration had ordered the detention of Khan Suri, a citizen of India, on 17 March. He was previously being held at an immigration prison in Alvarado, Texas.
Immigration officials revoked his J-1 student visa, alleging his father-in-law, Ahmed Yousef, was an adviser to Hamas officials more than a decade ago in addition to claims that he was “deportable” because of his posts on social media in support of Palestine. Yousef, who has not been an adviser to Hamas in over a decade, has said Khan Suri was not involved in “political activism” on behalf of Hamas.
On March 15, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, issued a determination that Khan Suri’s presence in the US “would have potentially serious foreign policy consequences”, according to a statement filed in the case by a Virginia immigration office.
Khan Suri, who is married to a Palestinian American US citizen, Mapheze Saleh, is a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). Many students and alumni of the institution signed a letter opposing his detention by Ice.
Giles prohibited federal officials in March from deporting the postdoctoral fellow after his wife filed an emergency court request to prevent deportation.
