In a 2-1 decision, Virginia judges denied the Trump administration’s appeal for Georgetown University researcher Badar Khan Suri to be placed in immigration detention again.
The judges called the attempt to detain Khan Suri again a threat to the constitutional right of habeas corpus, which protects people from arrests without a fair legal process.
“To allow the government to undermine habeas jurisdiction by moving detainees without notice or accountability reduces the writ of habeas corpus to a game of jurisdictional hide-and-seek,” the judges wrote.
“The filing of the petition was based on the only information available to the petitioner and his counsel, because the government chose to move Suri without informing his wife or attorney of his location or custodian,” the judges wrote. “If not for our conclusion that jurisdiction lies in the Eastern District of Virginia, that deliberate choice would have deprived the petitioner of any meaningful opportunity to contest his detention prior to removal to a distant jurisdiction.”
The ruling comes as Khan Suri’s deportation case plays out.
Khan Suri, a Georgetown University professor and postdoctoral scholar, was arrested by immigration authorities in Northern Virginia in March.
He was taken to an ICE detention center in Texas that same month.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ordered his release in May, saying Khan Suri has not been accused of or convicted of a crime.
His detention was in violation of his First Amendment right to free speech and his Fifth Amendment right to due process, she said.
Khan Suri walked out of the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, after Giles’ ruling.
The Department of Homeland Security accused Khan Suri of “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.”
“I do respect and acknowledge the fact that Mr. Suri has significant equitable factors in his favor,” the dissenting judge wrote. “The district court found that he presents neither a danger to the community nor a risk of flight, which are both important considerations in rulings on pretrial release. Yet the government’s jurisdictional arguments with regard to the INA are not without considerable force.”
Khan Suri has been a postdoc at Georgetown for the past three years.
Masked agents arrested him outside his home in Arlington, Virginia, on March 19. The agents identified themselves as being with the Department of Homeland Security and told him the government had revoked his visa.
The Trump administration said in March they quickly moved Khan Suri from a facility in Farmville, Virginia, because of overcrowding to a detention center in Louisiana and then to Texas.
