A federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security not to deport Badar Khan Suri, the Georgetown University postdoctoral researcher whom federal immigration officials detained March 17.
The March 20 filing from U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, which The Hoya obtained, orders the government to ensure Khan Suri remains in the United States. Another March 20 motion from Khan Suri’s wife, petitioning the court to release Khan Suri immediately and “permit him to return home to me,” is pending before Giles.
The filing from Khan Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh (GRD ’26), who is a U.S. citizen and Georgetown graduate student, also requests that the court transfer his case permanently to courts in Virginia, where Khan Suri lives and was arrested, rather than in Louisiana, where DHS is holding him in a staging facility, or Texas, where DHS has multiple detention facilities.
According to Saleh’s motion, she was home in Rosslyn, Va., with their three children when she received a call from Khan Suri as he returned home from Iftar at Georgetown. Three uniformed men wearing masks were handcuffing Khan Suri outside their home and eventually informed him his visa had been revoked as they forcibly placed him into a black SUV.
Saleh’s motion also states that Khan Suri told her March 17, after his arrest, that he is scheduled to appear in a Texas federal court May 6. According to a March 18 petition from Khan Suri’s lawyer which The Hoya obtained, Khan Suri is currently in the Alexandra Staging Facility in Alexandria, La. — a privately managed detention center used to hold detainees for 72 hours as they await deportation — but the petition says he is at “imminent risk” of being moved to a detention facility in Los Fresnos, Texas.
Saleh said the Alexandra facility has not accommodated Khan Suri’s dietary restrictions and meal constraints during Ramadan and that she has concerns for his health due to a chronic digestive disease.
Saleh said in her motion Khan Suri is their family’s only source of income, and her husband’s arrest has prevented her from going outside to class at Georgetown or shopping because she fears government action against herself and the couple’s children.
“I feel completely unsafe and can’t stop looking at the door, terrified someone else will take me and the children away at will,” Saleh said in the petition.