Lawyers for a university academic association alleged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) targeted Georgetown University postdoctoral researcher Badar Khan Suri for his academic research and political speech.
These arguments, which lawyers explained July 10 in a Massachusetts federal court, are part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which includes Georgetown, against the federal government. The lawsuit argues the government detained and threatened students and faculty for protected speech, including former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk.
During the trial, senior DHS official Peter Hatch testified that a DHS profile of Khan Suri, called a “Report of Analysis” (ROA), looked at his research, teaching and pro-Palestinian advocacy, but not his personal life.
Vanessa Conlon, counsel for the plaintiffs, questioned Hatch on the contents of the ROA, saying the report included information about Khan Suri’s course from education tool Coursicle, links to his Georgetown webpage and descriptions of his research. Conlon said the ROA also included statements from third parties that alleged Khan Suri spread “Hamas propaganda.”
DHS’s Office of Intelligence, which Hatch leads, produced ROAs for students listed on the Israel-supporting doxing website Canary Mission, including Khan Suri, according to Hatch’s testimony. The Department of Justice’s National Security Division then summarized the findings for each ROA in a letter to the Department of State to decide to take action on the findings.
ROAs aim to inform immigration enforcement efforts by compiling information potentially relevant to violations of law. In Khan Suri’s case, Conlon argued the purported violations were based on Khan Suri’s protected academic and political speech.
The Hoya was unable to obtain a copy of the ROA for Khan Suri because it was sealed by the court.
Hatch defended the information the DHS analyst gathered, saying the ROA aims to paint a picture of the individual under scrutiny.
“We’re collecting information about — or reporting information about the individual, to understand the details about the individual,” Hatch said in court.
“We also put what car he drives or where he lives,” Hatch added. “It provides information to understand the individual and what that individual does.”
When pressed by Conlon, Hatch admitted that Khan Suri’s ROA lacks such personal information, including hobbies, weekend activities or his car. He also agreed with Conlon’s statement that ROAs should collect information only “pertinent potentially to a violation of law.”
Conlon said the ROA shows that DHS considered Khan Suri’s academic scholarship and social media posts as relevant to legal violations.
“In this instance, for a professor, what was potentially pertinent were articles about his scholarship, his course posting at his university and things that other people wrote about him on the internet,” Conlon said in court.
Hatch said the ROA includes the information a DHS analyst found, adding he “would assume” it represents all the potentially relevant information the analyst could find.
The ROA also included press reporting and social media posts alleging Khan Suri “spreads Hamas propaganda and promotes antisemitism on social media,” according to the testimony. The DHS analyst who wrote the ROA specifically cited posts from Anna Stanley, a former British intelligence agent who wrote about Khan Suri online in February. Stanley, who works for the conservative think tank the Middle East Forum, later celebrated Khan Suri’s detainment on social media as the success of her posts.
Hatch said that just because a post appeared in the ROA does not mean the analyst recommends a specific action.
“The analyst did not say that that’s what the government thinks or did not recommend anything from that, just put the fact that there was an article or a post and this is what it said and this is who it is said by,” Hatch said.
Conlon said the analyst’s own writing appears to target Khan Suri for his pro-Palestinian advocacy.
“It says ‘Khan Suri appears to post pro-Palestinian content,’” Conlon said. “That is not an excerpt from social media, that is a characterization by the analyst about the nature of Mr. Suri’s online postings.”
John Armstrong, the top consular official for the State Department, testified July 11 that the State Department detained Khan Suri for alleged pro-Hamas advocacy.
“It cites Mr. Suri’s direct connection to Hamas leadership as well as his involvement in antisemitic activities that created a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States,” Armstrong said in court.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit seek to prevent the government from deporting students and faculty based on ideology by proving a pattern of content-based discriminatory enforcement. The trial is ongoing and is expected to last through the end of the week.
The lawsuit comes almost two months after a federal district court released Khan Suri from a 58-day federal detention. A federal appeals court upheld his release July 1.
AAUP president Todd Wolfson said the lawsuit seeks to defend academic freedom across all U.S. universities, regardless of the content of the speech.
“The Trump administration is going after international scholars and students who speak their minds about Palestine, but make no mistake: they won’t stop there,” Wolfson said in an April statement. “They’ll come next for those who teach the history of slavery or who provide gender-affirming health care or who research climate change or who counsel students about their reproductive choices.”
“We all have to draw a line together — as the old labor movement slogan says: an injury to one is an injury to all,” Wolfson added.