New York, March 20 -- An Indian student enrolled as a postdoctoral fellow in the US faces deportation after federal authorities said he was "spreading Hamas propaganda" and has "close connections to a suspected terrorist", who is a senior advisor to the group.
Badar Khan Suri is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
A senior Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that Suri, a foreign exchange student at Georgetown University, was "actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media".
"Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas. The Secretary of State issued a determination on March 15, 2025, that Suri's activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable."
A report in Politico said that Suri, who was studying and teaching on a student visa, has been "detained by federal immigration authorities amid the Trump administration's crackdown on student activists whom the government accuses of opposing American foreign policy."
The report said that "masked agents" arrested Suri from outside his home in Virginia Monday night.
A petition filed by his lawyer Hassan Ahmad said that he was taken to a facility in Virginia and is "expected to be transferred soon to a detention centre in Texas." Ahmad said in the petition that Suri is being punished "because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife - who is a US citizen - and because the government suspects that he and his wife oppose US foreign policy toward Israel."
The petition says the couple has "long been doxxed and smeared" on anonymously run, far-right websites due to their support for Palestinian rights. The petition adds that Suri's wife Mapheze Saleh has been alleged to have "ties with Hamas" and once worked for Al Jazeera.mpost
The Politico report cited a 2018 Indian newspaper article that said that Saleh's father, Ahamed Yousef, was a former deputy foreign minister in the Hamas government in Gaza. In the newspaper article, Suri is quoted as saying "My father-in-law left the Hamas government after its five-year term ended and there were no fresh elections."
The incident comes less than a week after an Indian student at Columbia University, Ranjani Srinivasan, self-deported after her visa was revoked for allegedly "advocating for violence and terrorism" and involvement in activities supporting Hamas.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.