A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the immediate release of Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University who was arrested in March, after two months of detention in an immigration facility in Texas.
Ruling from the bench, Judge Patricia Giles of the Eastern District of Virginia said the government had declined every opportunity to provide evidence detailing why Mr. Suri, an Indian national, should be detained. She also said it had not identified any past statements he had made that represented a threat to U.S. interests, as the government had claimed.
Judge Giles ordered that Mr. Suri be released without bond and imposed minimal conditions beyond requiring him to return to Virginia and attend all court proceedings. The government also had not offered proof that Mr. Suri, a scholar committed to “peace and conflict resolution,” might pose a flight risk, she said. The judge also decided against subjecting him to GPS monitoring or other terms the government had requested.
Mr. Suri was among several people legally studying in the United States — including Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk and Momodou Taal — whom the Trump administration targeted for their pro-Palestinian activism, raising profound legal questions about freedom of expression. Ms. Ozturk was released from detention last week as her case proceeds.
Mr. Suri, who has not been charged with a crime, moved to the United States in 2022 and had been teaching a course on minority rights in South Asia through his role at Georgetown this semester, according to court filings.
After Mr. Suri’s arrest in March, another district court judge ruled that he could not be removed from the United States before a court had the opportunity to weigh in.
