The Trump administration illegally targeted Georgetown postdoctoral fellow Dr. Badar Khan Suri and other international scholars for pro-Palestinian statements, ruled a federal judge on Sept. 30.
The ruling responds to a lawsuit that the American Association of University Professors filed in March accusing President Trump and his administration of criminalizing “any speech supportive of Palestinian human rights.”
Georgetown University signed onto an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit’s plaintiffs in April. An amicus brief is a petition that people or groups who did not file a case can submit to the court in an attempt to influence the court’s decision.
In the brief, Georgetown was one of 86 universities to challenge Trump’s revocation of international students’ visas and detentions of noncitizen scholars.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detained Khan Suri outside his home in Virginia on March 19. He was released from a detention center in Texas on May 14.
In the 160-page ruling, U.S. District Judge William Young writes that the DHS detained Khan Suri based on the claim that he “actively spreads Hamas propaganda and promotes anti-Semitism on social media,” citing his Instagram posts that “appear” to be “Pro-Palestinan content.”
“This case…squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in the United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us,” Young wrote. “The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’”
Aubrey Butterfield contributed reporting.
