Judge orders release of Indian academic held by US immigration authorities

New York, May 15 (IANS) A federal judge in the US has ordered the release of an Indian academic held by the immigration authorities and threatened with deportation.

Judge Patricia Giles ruled on Wednesday that the US government had not given proof that Badar Khan Suri was a danger to society and that that he had the right to freedom of expression, which applied to non-citizens also.

"The First Amendment extends to non-citizens and doesn't distinguish between citizens and non-citizens," she said, noting that the government likely wanted to deport him because of his views and his marriage to a Palestinian-American woman.

US Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin accused Suri of "spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media".

Suri, who has a PhD from Jamia Milia University in New Delhi, was a was a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University in Washington, where he was teaching a course on "Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia" while researching peacebuilding in conflict zones.

He is married to a US citizen, Maphaze Ahmad Yousef, the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, who was described in a Hindustan Times article quoted by Politico as "a senior political advisor to the Hamas leadership".

Suri was seized by masked immigration officers outside his home in a Washington suburb in Virginia State in March and told that his student visa had been revoked, according to his lawyer.

After his arrest, he was moved to a detention centre in Louisiana and then to another in Texas pending his deportation.

Suri's lawyers had filed a habeas corpus petition seeking his release and opposing his detention in Texas.

Government lawyers wanted the case moved to Texas, where judges are more conservative.

Suri is still facing a deportation case in a Texas court.

Judge Giles' ruling in Suri's case in a court in Alexandria was the third high-profile setback for President Donald Trump's administration's efforts to deport students accused of supporting Hamas, the terrorist organisation that controls Gaza and had launched an attack on Israel.

Another judge on Friday ordered the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University.

She was arrested in a similar manner to Suri's on the grounds that her visa had been revoked because of her alleged support for Hamas in an article in a student newspaper.

Mohsen Mahdawi, who led anti-Israel protests at Columbia University and was detained pending his deportation, was ordered released by a judge on April 30.

--IANS

al/khz