The Trump administration is reportedly attempting to deport an Indian post-doctoral fellow from Georgetown University, using the same obscure section of immigration law cited in the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia grad and pro-Palestine protest leader.
The provision the government allegedly cites allows the Secretary of State to determine non-citizens are eligible for fast-track deportations if they threaten U.S. foreign policy interests.
Masked Department of Homeland Security agents arrived outside the Rosslyn, Virginia, home of Badar Khan Suri on Monday and told him his student visa had been revoked.
In a still-sealed habeas corpus petition filed Tuesday, Suri’s lawyer said the fellow appeared to be in the process of being punished for the Palestinian heritage and political views of his wife Mapheze Saleh, a U.S. citizen.
“We’re trying to speak with him. That hasn’t happened yet,” his attorney, Hassan Ahmad, told Politico, which first reported on the arrest and obtained physical copies of the filing.
“This is just another example of our government abducting people the same way they abducted Khalil,” he added.
The Independent has contacted the State Department and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for comment.
A 2018 article in the Hindustan Times describes Saleh’s father Ahmed Yousef as a “senior political advisor to the Hamas leadership.”
Georgetown said Dr. Khan Suri “was duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peace-building in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention,” a university spokesperson said in a statement to The Independent.
“We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly,” the spokesperson added.
Khalil, the Columbia student, has also challenged his detention, arguing his First Amendment political speech and Fifth Amendment due process rights were violated by the arrest.
The Immigration and Nationality Act provision that has been cited by the State Department as providing it with deportation authority in such cases has rarely been tested in court.
However, Donald Trump’s sister, a federal judge, ruled in a case in 1996 involving a wanted Mexican diplomat that the provision was unconstitutional and a “breathtaking departure” from the principles that deportations and extraditions are based on clearly defined offenses and involve a process allowing migrants to hear and challenge the basis of their removal.
“‘Foreign policy’ cannot serve as the talisman behind which Congress may abdicate its responsibility to pass only sufficiently clear and definite laws,” she wrote at the time, though her ruling was overturned in an appeals court on procedural grounds.
International students at Columbia told The Independent after Khalil’s arrest that a climate of fear has descended over the campus.
“Given the magnitude of statements made by the president and his administration, I feel I am not safe,” one international student said.
Ava Lyon-Sereno, a student involved in campus activism surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, said the mood is now “tense and fearful.”
“International students that haven’t been involved in protests at all are scared and anxious, and the university isn’t taking any sort of hard stance about not cooperating with ICE,” she told The Independent, referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Richard Hall contributed reporting to this story
