New Delhi: The Donald Trump administration in the United States has detained an Indian scholar, Badar Khan Suri, from Georgetown University in Washington, claiming that he was “spreading propaganda” of the Palestine resistance group Hamas.CNN has reported on a letter through which the university’s interim president Robert Groves informed its Board of Directors that Suri has been detained by the Department of Homeland Security and that his visa has been revoked.Groves says in the letter that Georgetown is not aware of Suri having engaged in “any illegal activity” and that the university had not received a reason for his detentionSuri’s doctoral research was on peace building in Iraq and Afghanistan. At Georgetown, he was teaching a class on majoritarianism and minority rights in South Asia.‘Punished’ because of wife’s heritageHassan Ahmad, Suri’s attorney, told CNN that Suri is in Louisiana and awaiting a hearing at the immigration court. Politico reported that masked agents arrested Suri outside his home in the Rosslyn neighbourhood of Arlington, Virginia, on the night of March 17.“I will say that seeing our government abduct and jail another innocent person is beyond contemptible,” Ahmad told CNN, adding that the situation suggests that the “problem is with the government and not the scholar.”Following a report on Politico, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed in a post on X that in addition to “spreading Hamas propaganda”, Suri was “promoting antisemitism on social media.” McLaughlin then claimed that “Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.”Politico reported quoting from Suri petition that Suri is being punished because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife — who is a US citizen.A Hindustan Times feature from 2018, had recorded their “Indo-Palestinian love story.” The couple have a son, Arafat.‘Obscure legal statute’“The Secretary of State issued a determination on March 15, 2025 that Suri’s activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(i),” McLaughlin added in her post on X.Said secretary of state is Marco Rubio, who India’s external affairs minister S. Jaishankar met shortly after Trump’s inauguration earlier this year.Section 237 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is titled “deportable aliens.” It contains deportability provisions for ‘aliens’ – immigrants who are in the US – subject to the secretary of state’s discretion. CNN has called the legal statute “obscure” and Politico, “rarely used.”Suri’s arrest intensifies concerns over an enormous impingement on US intelligentsia’s freedom of speech. The US government has arrested and jailed Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student, over pro-Palestine protests.Suri is the second Indian national to face such action. Earlier this month, Columbia University scholar Ranjani Srinivasan had to leave the US after her student visa was revoked by the US State Department. While she was called a “terrorist sympathiser” by Trump officials, Srinivasan said that her Palestine activism was limited to social media.A report on the Wall Street Journal notes that Columbia, the site for pitched protests, has got close to yielding to Trump’s “far-reaching” demands so he can restore $400 million in federal funding.“The demands include banning masks, empowering campus cops and putting the school’s department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies under “academic receivership,” which means it would no longer be controlled by the faculty,” the report says.
