U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles in Alexandria, Virginia, ordered that Indian national Badar Khan Suri “shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court issues a contrary order.”
“Dr. Suri is an academic, not an activist," his attorney Hassan Ahmad wrote in a court filing on Thursday. “But he spoke out on social media about his views on the Israel-Gaza war. Even more so, his wife is an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and the violence it has perpetrated against Palestinians.”
Suri was accused of “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” and determined to be deportable by the Secretary of State’s office, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said late Wednesday on the social platform X. Suri’s case was first reported by Politico.
Suri's wife, Mapheze Saleh, was born in Missouri but spent much of her life in Gaza after age five, according to court filings. She and Suri married in New Delhi, India, in 2013 and lived there before moving to the U.S.; he came in 2022 and she and their children joined him the following year.
Before his arrest, Suri and his wife had been targets of conservative campus groups, in part because Saleh's father is Ahmed Yousef, a former adviser to Hamas, Hashemi said.
