A federal judge in Virginia has commissioned the immediate release of Georgetown Academic Badar Khan Suri from ice detakeence during a hearing on Wednesday.
Khan Suri was one of different people who legally study in the US who are the target of the Trump government for their pro-Palestinian activism. He spent two months in detention.
Judge Patricia Giles in the US in Alexandria, Virginia, said that the ruling was immediately in force without conditions and not a bond. She added that Khan’s release was “in the public interest to disturb the hair -raising effect on protected speech” during the hearing. In her decision, the judge explained how the government has submitted insufficient evidence about various of its claims.
A large crowd of protesters outside the courthouse reportedly cheered when hearing the news of the pronunciation.
The Trump government ordered the detention of Khan Suri, a citizen of India, on 17 March. He was previously held in an immigration prison in Alvarado, Texas.
Immigration officials have withdrawn his J-1 student visa, claiming that his father-in-law, Ahmed Yousef, was an adviser to Hamas officials more than ten years ago, in addition to claims that he was “deportable” because of his messages on social media to support Palestine. Yousef, who has not been Hamas’s adviser for more than ten years, said that Khan Suri was not involved in “political activism” on behalf of Hamas.
On March 15, the US State Secretary, Marco Rubio, stated a determination that the presence of Khan Suri in the US would “have serious consequences for foreign policy”, according to a statement submitted in the case by an Immigration Office in Virginia.
Khan Suri, who is married to a Palestinian American citizen, Mapheze Saleh, is a senior postdoctoral fellow at the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian understanding of the institution (ACMCU). Many students and alumni from the institution signed a letter that was against his detention through ice.
Giles prohibited federal officials in March to deport the postdoctoral fellow after his wife had submitted a request for emergency court to prevent deportation.
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