Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, was released from the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on May 14. Suri, an Indian national, is a legal U.S. resident with a J-1 visa for academic and exchange visitors, and is married to a U.S. citizen. Masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested him at his suburban Virginia home for deportation on March 17. At the time of the arrest, the federal agents told Suri that his visa was revoked on the orders of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism on social media.”
U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles in Alexandria, Virginia, ordered Suri’s release during a two-hour hearing. Judge Giles stated that most likely Suri’s rights had been violated in the effort to deport him. The judge said that the government made many claims against Suri, but presented no evidence to support the charges. Judge Giles said that Suri is likely to prevail on his arguments that he is being retaliated against, and that his First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of association, along with his Fifth Amendment rights to due process, are all being violated, according to the Washington Post. The judge said, “The First Amendment extends to non-citizens, as it makes no distinction between citizens and non-citizens.” Judge Giles said that releasing Suri was in the public interest because of the need to “disrupt the chilling effect on protected speech.”
