A federal judge has ordered that a Georgetown professor who was detained by the Trump administration for his support of Palestine must be released, according to multiple reports.
The ruling from Virginia district judge Patricia Tolliver Giles sets Indian citizen Badar Khan Suri, 41, free from the Texas ICE detention center where he has been held for nearly two months, allowing him to return to his wife and three children in northern Virginia.
His wife, Maphaz Ahmad Yousef, said at a news conference that the ruling “brought tears to my eyes,” adding that she wished she could give the judge a “heartfelt hug,” NBC News reported.
He will be allowed to attend hearings about his case in Texas virtually and required to attend those in Virginia in person.
The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s requests for comment on the ruling.
Suri, a postdoctoral fellow in conflict resolution, was arrested by masked ICE officers who descended on him as he returned home from a Ramadan meal gathering on March 17. He was told his visa had been revoked and was quickly whisked away to an ICE detention center.
Suri has not been charged with a crime. The Trump administration claims that he has ties to the terrorist organization Hamas. Suri’s wife is a U.S. citizen with Palestinian heritage, and her father was once an adviser to the country’s Hamas-controlled government, according to the Associated Press.
Lawyers for Suri argue that he does not support Hamas and that he is being targeted by the Trump administration over a smattering of social media posts in support of Palestinians amid Israel’s war in Gaza, which began in the wake of the murder of hundreds of Israeli citizen by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 2023.
Suri is one of a number of non-citizen academics and students who have been detained and threatened with deportation by the Trump administration over their activism in support of Palestine.
Trump has also waged war on a number of wealthy American universities, arguing that they have not done enough to battle antisemitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict. The administration has frozen hundreds of millions in federal funding to Harvard University, for one, unless the school complies with a list of demands.
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