Who is Badar Khan Suri, the Indian scholar accused of 'ties with Hamas?'
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On the evening of 17 March, masked federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) surrounded Badar Khan Suri in Rosslyn, Virginia, just as he returned home from opening his fast.
Suri, an Indian citizen and a post-doctoral scholar at Georgetown University, was told that his student visa had been revoked and that he faced imminent deportation.
Suri's wife, Mapheze Saleh, a Palestinian with American citizenship, watched as the masked agents took him and his passport and drove off.
In his petition filed in court earlier this week, his lawyers say that Suri has become the latest scholar to face threats of removal from the US over claims his views contradicted US foreign policy.
Suri's lawyers say the Trump administration is seeking to "retaliate against and punish noncitizens like Mr Suri solely for their family ties to those who may have either expressed criticism of US foreign policy as it relates to Israel, or who are perceived to hold such critical views imputed to them due to familial relationship," the petition says.
"Neither Secretary Rubio nor any other government official has alleged that Mr Suri has committed any crime or, indeed, broken any law whatsoever," the petition added.
By Thursday morning, close to three days after agents took Suri, his lawyers still hadn't spoken to him.
Who is Badar Khan Suri?
Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
According to his resume on Georgetown's website - which was taken down on Thursday morning - Suri completed his PhD in peace and conflict studies from the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi in 2020, where he examined state building in Afghanistan and Iraq.
His bio noted that he was working on a project that examined the "potential causes that hinder cooperation among religiously diverse societies and possibilities to overcome those hindrances".
'He has committed no crime. At Georgetown his focus was his research and his teaching'
- Nader Hahemi, Georgetown University
The DHS did not respond directly to questions from Middle East Eye but instead sent a statement in which it accused Suri of "actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media".
"Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas. The Secretary of State issued a determination on March 15, 2025 that Suri’s activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable," the statement sent to MEE read.
The DHS did not provide any evidence or online reference to its claims.
Suri's arrest has prompted outrage amongst his colleagues, who describe him as "a respected academic and scholar".
"His area of research is minority rights, majoritarianism and political authoritarianism," Nader Hashemi, director of ACMCU, told MEE.
"He has committed no crime. At Georgetown his focus was his research and his teaching. Unlike other academics, he was not an outspoken activist or community organiser," Hashemi added.
Separately, the ACMCU condemned Suri's arrest. In a statement issued on Thursday, it said the incident had to be understood "in the context of the Trump Administration’s foreign and domestic policies [and] specifically, US support for genocide abroad and McCarthyism at home".
"As it continues to enable genocide in Gaza, so too will the Trump administration expand its authoritarian weaponization of the legal system to attack political speech that is protected by the First Amendment," the ACMCU said.
Suri's arrest comes after weeks of articles from pro-Israel and Zionist news websites targetting both Suri and his wife, Saleh, over their purported position on Israel's war in Gaza, which has been called a "genocide" by human rights organisations, international bodies and leaders worldwide.
In an article in late February, the pro-Israel conservative outfit Middle East Forum (MEF) said they had discovered that Saleh is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, a former senior political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, the then leader of Hamas, who is said to have been critical of Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack targeting southern Israel.
Lawyers noted that Saleh was added to the pro-Israel blacklisting site Canary Mission, in which her former employment at Al Jazeera as well as her city of birth, Gaza City, was cited "as support for her alleged ties with Hamas".
On Wednesday evening, hours after news broke of the case against Suri, MEF claimed credit for his arrest.
"Unlike Georgetown, which ignored evidence of Suri's Hamas ties, the Trump administration acted decisively," Anna Stanley, a researcher with MEF, wrote in a statement.
"Extremists hiding behind academia won't find sanctuary here," Stanley added.
