The federal immigration authorities have arrested a graduate student from the University of Georgetown in India who taught at the Washington institution, DC, in a student visa, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
The graduated student, Badar Khan Suri, was arrested by masked agents outside his Arlington, Virginia, Monday night, said lawyer Hassan Ahmad.
The agents identified themselves as with the Department of National Security and told him that the government had revoked their visa, said Ahmad.
Political first reported the news.
Ahmad described Suri’s arrest “beyond contempt” and said Suri has not done anything wrong.
Georgetown University said he was not aware of any misconduct from Suri.
The National Security Department and the State Department did not respond to a request for comments, even about why Suri has been arrested.
He was arrested in the staging of Alexandria in Alexandria, Louisiana, waiting for an immigration audience, according to the immigration and customs’ detainee of the United States. Ahmad confirmed its location.
Suri’s arrest occurs when the Trump administration seeks to deport the graduate student from Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil, who participated in protests against Israel and the War in Gaza, through the use of a section of the Immigration Law on “Consequences of foreign policy.”
“Seeing our government kidnap and jail another innocent person is more than despicable,” said Ahmad, lawyer from Suri. “And if a consummated scholar that focuses on conflict resolution is whom the government decides that it is bad for foreign policy, then the problem is with the government, not with the scholar.”
Suri is a postdoctoral fellow in the center of Alwaleed Bin Talal for Muslim-Christian understanding at the Edmund A. Walsh Foreign Service School, according to its profile on the website of the University of Georgetown.
His biography says he completed his pH.D. In Peace and Conflict Studies of the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and the Resolution of Conflicts in Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi in 2020. He wrote his thesis on “Transition Democracy, divided societies and peace perspectives: a study of state construction in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
The University of Georgetown said it has not been told why Suri was arrested.
“We are not aware that it participates in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for their detention. We support the rights of our community members to free investigation, deliberation and debate, even if underlying ideas can be difficult, controversial or objectable,” said the university. “We hope that the legal system judges this case fairly.”
Suri has traveled widely in conflict zones in India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestinian areas, according to their university profile.
His Georgetown profile says that it is an “interdisciplinary scholar” whose areas of interest are religion, violence and peace, ethnic conflicts and peace processes in the Middle East and southern Asia.
The University says that it is working on a project that analyzes the possible causes that hinder cooperation between societies and religiously diverse possibilities to overcome those obstacles.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has defended the attempts to deport Khalil saying that “nobody has the right to a student visa.” Khalil’s deportation has been temporarily blocked by a judge.
Last week, ICE arrested Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman who participated in protests in Columbia and surpassed her student visa, authorities said.
Suri’s lawyer presented a request for writing habeas corpus in a federal court in Virginia, seeking to determine if his detention is legal.
