March 21 (UPI) -- Badar Khan Suri, arrested by government agents for allegedly spreading Hamas propaganda, cannot be deported unless the courts rule otherwise, as per a judge's ruling.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ordered Thursday that Suri "shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the court issues a contrary order."
Suri, an Indian national, is a postdoctoral associate who's been working and studying at Georgetown on a student visa. Department of Homeland Security agents arrested him Monday for purportedly "spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media," said the Assistant Secretary of the DHS Tricia McLaughlin in an X post Wednesday, and that "Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas."
Suri's wife Mapheze Saleh, who has Palestinian heritage, is an American citizen who had once worked for Al Jazeera and whose father, Ahmed Yousef, was ostensibly a senior political advisor to Hamas.
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Suri was brought to a detention center in Virginia, then transferred to him to an ICE facility in Louisiana, which is known to often be the last stop before a person is deported.
His attorney filed a writ of habeas corpus Tuesday, followed by a memorandum Thursday, and the ACLU of Virginia also filed an emergency motion Thursday on Suri's behalf.
Saleh declared to the court Thursday that her father "served as political advisor to the Prime Minister of Gaza" but left the Gazan government and is currently a professor at the Islamic University of Gaza, where she studied journalism. She admitted to sharing "posts on a daily basis" about things she saw in Gaza, "including posts that expressed sorrow for the deaths of Gazan people."
She then alleged that "certain websites had targeted me personally" because of her father's job with the Gazan government, and that one website "falsely that my husband and I have 'ties to Hamas'."
Giles then made the order Thursday to keep Suri stateside unless another judge ordered otherwise.
Suri's detention follows the March 8 arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and green card holder who was involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests.
