Dr. Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow who teaches at Georgetown, told his students that he came to the U.S. to escape repression of free speech in his home country of India. On Monday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents arrested Khan Suri, a lawful U.S. resident, outside his home in a move that Georgetown community members have condemned as retaliation for his speech.
Due to concerns about privacy and fear of public retaliation, students who know Khan Suri spoke to the Voice on the condition of anonymity. They are identified in this article by random letters.
According to H and E, who are both in Khan Suri’s class, Khan Suri told his students that writing about the suppression of the rights of religious minorities in India made him and many of his friends a target while in the country.
“The establishment didn’t like him [in India],” H told the Voice. “He was a very strong critic.”
Now, H reflects on Khan Suri’s decision to come to the U.S. differently.
“He came to the U.S. in the hope that maybe this would be the land of freedom of speech,” H said. “But I guess he made the wrong call.”
Khan Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). A university spokesperson told the Voice that Khan Suri has a student visa and is legally in the U.S., and that the university has “not received a reason for his detention.”
Khan Suri is married to Mapheze Ahmad Saleh (MSFS ’26), a U.S. citizen who was primarily raised in Gaza. Saleh’s father was a “senior political advisor” to Hamas, according to the Hindustan Times, which interviewed Saleh in 2018 for a profile on her and Khan Suri.
A lawsuit filed by Khan Suri’s attorney argues that the federal government has violated a number of his constitutional rights, including his First and Fifth Amendment rights. The petition states that the arrest is part of a Trump administration effort to “retaliate against and punish noncitizens like Mr. Suri solely for their family times to those who may have expressed criticism of U.S. foreign policy as it relates to Israel.” On Thursday, a federal judge ordered that Khan Suri cannot be deported as the lawsuit is underway.
Since news broke on Wednesday night about the arrest, students have spoken at length to the Voice about what Khan Suri means to the university community. He teaches an undergraduate seminar called “Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia,” and six students have told the Voice that he has been an active member of Georgetown’s Muslim Life.
On Monday night, Khan Suri’s class met just hours before he would be detained. On Wednesday, when students saw the news that their teacher had been arrested, they were shocked.
“I think the initial reaction was disbelief, but also just this really gut-wrenching, unsettling kind of fear,” E said. “To think that this man who is so down to earth and humble and easy to talk to is being put through an ordeal like this, I didn’t really know how to wrap my head around it yesterday, and I don’t think I still fully do.”
Students in Khan Suri’s class described him as a knowledgeable teacher and kind mentor.
“I could never guess he would do anything that would hurt anyone at all. He wouldn’t even hurt a fly,” H said.
E emphasized his humanity and joy.
“Once you get into a conversation, there’s no stopping. I’ve learned so much from him—he’s got a good sense of humor for sure, which is always fun, especially in class,” E said. “He likes to poke fun at his students sometimes in a really silly way.”
Khan Suri was also active in Muslim Life on campus. Community members shared about his and his family’s participation in Georgetown’s Muslim community events.
“I first met him at the mosque. It’s a very close-knit Muslim community that we have,” H said. “I used to see him with his kids—he had three kids—walking around the mosque, very, very young and very energetic.”
M, a graduate student involved in Muslim Life, remembers Khan Suri praying side-by-side with his son, always introducing him to other community members at religious events such as iftars and Friday prayers.
“Last year around this same time, we were sharing iftar together where his son also participated. I remember very vividly, he was very aware that [his son] had enough food and that he was enjoying himself—very warm and very kind-hearted,” M said.
H attended iftar with Khan Suri on Monday—the night he was arrested—and ran into him again later that evening, before he left campus. H described their conversation that night to the Voice.
“He was telling me about his time here, like, he’s not too happy nowadays, because he’s somehow rumbled up in these allegations,” H said.
Last month, when a number of right wing outlets published about Saleh’s family connections, posts about her went viral on X, leading many right-wing accounts and publications to call for her to be expelled from Georgetown and deported.
H told the Voice that Khan Suri then left campus via the GUTS Bus to Rosslyn on Monday night. According to a lawsuit filed by Khan Suri’s lawyer at the Eastern District Court of Virginia, he was returning home after iftar when DHS agents surrounded and arrested him outside his home.
On Thursday, Saleh filed a petition in the same court, where she expressed the impact of Khan Suri’s detention on her and their three children.
“Our children are in desperate need of their father and miss him dearly. They keep asking about him and when he will come back. I cannot bring myself to tell them what has really happened to him, although my eldest child understands he is in some kind of trouble,” Saleh wrote. “I feel completely unsafe and can’t stop looking at the door, terrified that someone else will come and take me and the children away as well.”
International students on campus now also fear that their own residency status in the U.S. may be at risk.
“All of the international students, they feel like, they cannot deport all of us, but there’s a feeling that this will not be the only case,” M told the Voice. “This instance, it’s just spread a lot of fear. I just wish that the international students will also be ensured that Georgetown University and the community will support them.”
Some international students worry that if they travel outside the U.S., they will not be able to return. M, who is an international student, explained that students who decide not to go home for the summer will not get to see their families and will also have to finance staying in the U.S.
“We have our families on the other side of the ocean and there’s already so much distance, and we need to be able to not only freely speak, but also freely move,” M said. “I’ve been granted this visa but I feel like day-to-day I’m only less and less tolerated here—my views and myself—at any moment I could be deported.”
According to Joel Hellman, Dean of the SFS, Georgetown is working to support Khan Suri, including by providing information about “options for legal counsel.”
“We are in close communication with the family to determine how best to support them at this difficult time. As we learn more about the case, the University will determine what additional steps it can take, keeping in mind their impact on our international community. The University is complying with all federal requirements,” Hellman wrote in an email to SFS faculty and staff on Wednesday evening.
The ACMCU, where Khan Suri is a researcher, condemned the Trump administration for Khan Suri’s detainment.
“A bedrock of American democracy has been our universities and colleges,” the ACMCU wrote in a statement released on Thursday. “Historically, they have promoted free inquiry, debate, and dissent. It is no surprise that the Trump Administration views these institutions as a danger and wants to silence them. Critical thinking poses a threat to all authoritarian regimes, including the one in Washington D.C.”
Khan Suri’s detainment comes less than two weeks after Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate. Khalil was a lead organizer in Columbia’s pro-Palestine protests last spring. The Trump administration called for Khalil, a green card holder, to be deported, though a federal judge blocked the government from doing so while the court reviews a petition challenging Khalil’s detention.
Khan Suri and Khalil’s arrests follow President Trump’s promise in January to “cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.”
Georgetown student government (GUSA) President Ethan Henshaw (CAS ’26), and Vice President Darius Wagner (CAS ’27) spoke to the Voice about how the university has reacted to Khan Suri’s detainment. The two emphasized that while Georgetown has to be careful to not draw the ire of the federal government, the university should still be reaching out to students and taking action beyond public statements.
“I think students are feeling very unsafe, professors are feeling unsafe, their ability to teach classes is currently under threat,” Wagner said. “So, I think this calls for more than statements, and I think what it calls for is bringing the Hoya community together and making sure that we have strong channels of communication and information that will help us get through some of the toughest challenges.”
Henshaw called on students who have the privilege of U.S. citizenship to advocate for students who may be scared right now.
“I would encourage students to keep using their voices, and especially students who are not so vulnerable to attacks—[if] you were born here, you’re a citizen, you’re not going to get deported for things. It’s time to stand up for the other students who perhaps are much more vulnerable,” he said.
Other students are calling on campus communities to protect each other and support free speech.
“Everyone who just stands for freedom of speech, they need to come together. Not just Muslims need to stand for Badar. No one needs to stand for someone because they have an identity convergence with anyone,” H said. “I think what brings all of us, converges all of us together, is the fact that we just stand for freedom of speech.”
Those who know Khan Suri emphasized his importance in the community as a teacher, mentor, and friend. They hope that the rest of the world will see him as more than his detention or the headlines surrounding it.
“He’s a student, he’s an academic, he’s a dad, he’s a brother,” E said. “He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a human being. He’s funny, he’s silly, he’s intelligent, he’s sarcastic. He’s so much more than whatever can be fit into the news articles that are being put out right now.”
