RICHMOND, Va. – Today Georgetown professor and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Badar Khan Suri filed an amended complaint in his case Khan Suri v. Trump challenging his illegal arrest and detention by the Trump administration for exercising his free speech and for his wife’s speech as well as her family ties to Gaza.
With the complaint, the ACLU of Virginia, the Center for Constitutional Rights, HMA Law, and the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic at CUNY School of Law released new details surrounding the wrongful arrest of Dr. Khan Suri, including video of his arrest and a statement given to his lawyers.
“The Trump administration is trying to silence speech it doesn’t agree with by targeting people like Dr. Khan Suri and Mahmoud Khalil, but ideas are not illegal,” said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Mary Bauer. “Americans don’t want to live in a country where the federal government ‘disappears’ people whose views it doesn’t like. The First Amendment protects all of us – regardless of citizenship – from being punished by the government for our political speech.”
On March 17, 2025, Dr. Badar Khan Suri was accosted on his way home from a traditional Ramadan meal celebration: Masked federal agents took his passport and told him he was being deported “today,” despite his lawful status in the U.S. He was taken to the Washington ICE office, where an arresting officer told him they knew he was not a criminal and that someone at a very high-level at the Secretary of State’s office “does not want you here.”
In just four days, Dr. Khan Suri was transferred among five different ICE facilities across three states, despite the fact that ICE records indicate there were beds in Virginia facilities. Dr. Khan Suri was fasting in religious observance of Ramadan, but multiple ICE facilities refused him food or water to break his fast.
For almost two weeks, he was housed in a room without a bed and with a television blaring 21 hours a day. Dr. Khan Suri was issued used underwear, and a bright red uniform that is usually reserved for detained individuals who have been classified as ‘high security’ based on their criminal history or alleged affiliation with criminal organizations. He is not permitted to work or spend more than two hours per week outside of his dorm.
“There’s a clear pattern to the Trump administration targeting noncitizens like Mahmoud Khalil and Dr. Badar Khan Suri for deportation. The Trump administration is trying to send a message that if you disagree with the U.S. government, you’ll be punished,” said Astha Sharma Pokharel, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Noncitizens have every right to express political ideas, including support for Palestinian rights. And no one should be targeted for who they’ve married. If they can do this to Dr. Khan Suri or Mahmoud Khalil, they can do this to any of us.”
Dr. Badar Khan Suri is a scholar of religion and peace processes who has received an outpouring of support from his colleagues at Georgetown University since his unlawful detainment. An Indian national, he lives with his wife and three children – all under the age of 10 – in Rosslyn, Virginia. The couple moved to the U.S., where Dr. Khan Suri’s wife was born, to raise their children in a society that values religious tolerance.
His son spent days crying uncontrollably following his father’s disappearance, and has now stopped speaking.
“I’ve never even been to a protest. I came to the U.S. to work and raise my family: I go to work, come home late, and still they came and took me and broke my family,” says Dr. Khan Suri. “In my work, I’ve seen lots of injustice. I just didn't think it would happen to me here.”
Dr. Khan Suri’s arrest, transfer, and detention came after he and his wife were doxxed online by right-wing websites like Canary Mission and CAMERA.org. Targeting, apprehending, and detaining Dr. Khan Suri on the basis of his or his wife’s past speech violates his protections under the First Amendment, while detaining him on the basis of his wife’s national origin and familial background violates his rights under the Fifth Amendment.
In response to Dr. Khan Suri’s emergency filings, a federal judge ordered that he cannot be removed from the country while his case is being considered. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia will hold a hearing on four pending motions – Khan Suri’s motions to return to Virginia and be released on bond, and the Trump administration’s motions to transfer venue to Texas and dismiss Dr. Khan Suri’s case contesting his detainment – on May 1, 2025.
