His lawyer said that a graduate student of a Georgetown University was detained this week and was targeted for exile by the Trump administration.
Badar Khan Suri, a post -dectorate fellow who teaches in Georgetown and a visa, was detained by his Arlington, immigration agents outside Virginia on Monday night, his lawyer said. The Homeland Security Department claimed that Suri is “actively spreading Hamas’s promotion and promoting antismitism on social media.”
Suri’s lawyer, Hasan Ahmed on Thursday denied that Suri ever made Hamas or anti -Hamas or anti -statements.
Ahmed has objected to “beyond contempt” in Suri’s custody.
“This is still the United States, and we don’t punish people, we do not overcome them and send them 1,000 miles from our family, which they may have said, what they may have posted on social media, or who they belong to,” Ahmed said.
A federal judge in Virginia on Thursday ordered that Suri is not removed from the US until the order is ordered by the court.
Sophia Greg, a lawyer from the American Civil Liberty Union of Virginia, said the judge’s block on any exile “exactly what we were expecting.”
“We were very worried for our customer, especially when we came to know that he was in a Louisiana staging facility, which is the last stop in the way of Termac,” he said on Thursday. “It was a great concern for us that it would be briefly deported.”
According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, Suri was in the facility of staging Alexandria at Alexandria, Louisiana on Thursday.
Assistant DHS Secretary Trisia McLaglin on Wednesday said on X, “Suri has a close relationship with a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.”
Suri has a wife who is an American citizen and three children in Virginia. His wife’s father, Ahmed Yousef, who lives in Gaza, is now a former advisor to the deceased Hamas leader Ismail Honeyheh-but the New York Times said that he left Hamas-led government under the leadership of Gaza and not a senior place with Hamas.
The Times reported that the Yusaf told the newspaper that Suri was not involved in any “political activism”, which was involved in Hamas. The newspaper said that Yusaf has publicly criticized Hamas’s decision to attack Israel on October 7, 2023 on Israel.
Ahmed told NBC News that he was not aware that Suri is in regular contact with Yusaf.
Ahmed said, “I only know about an example when my client contacted his father -in -law, and he was to ask for his daughter’s hand for marriage.”
Attempts and efforts to existing Suri as the Trump administration is trying to deport two other people involved in the protest against the war at Gaza at Columbia University.
One of them, Mahmud Khalil, is a Colombia graduate student who is a legal permanent resident and married an American citizen. Officials said the second Leka Cordia is a Palestinian woman who attended Columbia, but ended her visa.
The Trump administration is demanding to deport Suri and Khalil under the part of the US immigration law that allows it if a person’s “serious foreign policy for the United States will have serious consequences.”
ACLU and others have called the administration’s functions an attempt to punish people to express constitutionally protected ideas about war in Israel and Gaza.
“Political speech – although controversial can find it – can never be the basis of punishment, including exile, including exile,” ACLU Executive Director Mary Bauur said in a statement on Thursday, including exile. “We will not let this egoistic, unprecedented and illegal misuse of power become uncontrolled.”
State Secretary Marco Rubio has defended efforts to deport Khalil, saying “Nobody has the right to student visa”. A judge has temporarily blocked Khalil’s exile.
President Donald Trump in his election campaign condemned the student protest against Israel’s military action in Gaza, which after the Hamas terrorist attacks of 7 October against Israel. Some Congress Republicans have also criticized universities what they called antisementary behavior in protests.
In February, the Department of Justice announced what it said to the Antisement Task Force focusing on college premises. On March 7, the Trump administration also said that it was canceling around $ 400 million in the federal grant to Colombia.
On March 4, Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social, “All federal funding will stop for any college, school or university that allows illegal protest.”
