Power & Pushback: Court rejects Trump bid to have Georgetown scholar re-detained

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the U.S. government’s attempt to re-detain Georgetown scholar Dr. Badar Khan Suri, who the Trump administration is seeking to deport over his Palestine advocacy. The decision affirmed a lower court’s order granting him bail pending trial.

In March 2025, Suri, who is in the United States under a lawful visa and married to a U.S. citizen, was arrested outside his Virginia home before being detained for six weeks in a Texas immigration facility.

“(In) our view denying judicial review of detention claims like Suri’s misreads Congress’ statutes and undermines the protections guaranteed all persons on American soil by the writ of habeas corpus,” the court wrote.

“(An) unbroken line of caselaw also accords with common sense: if a noncitizen is challenging their detention pending removal, then waiting for their removal proceedings does them no good,” it also noted. “They have already been detained, allegedly in violation of the Constitution. This ‘absurd’ reading of the INA would make such detention claims ‘effectively unreviewable,’ and the Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to embrace it.”

“We are gratified that the court recognized the basic principle that the government cannot escape judicial review of their patently unconstitutional actions — here, arresting Dr. Khan Suri, transferring him far away from his family and community, and detaining and attempting to deport him for nothing more than his associations and constitutionally protected advocacy for Palestinian rights,” said Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Astha Sharma Pokharel, one of Suri’s lawyers.

Unlike other students and scholars targeted by the Trump administration, Suri did not directly participate in any Gaza solidarity protests after October 7. However, Suri’s spouse is a Palestinian-American and her father, Ahmed Yousef, lives in Gaza.

After he was arrested, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed that Suri was “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” despite providing no evidence. She also said that Suri maintained “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior adviser to Hamas,” referring to his father-in-law. Yousef told the New York Times that he left his government position over a decade ago.

“Today reaffirms my faith that an independent judiciary remains the truest guardian of liberty, due process, and the rule of law. I am profoundly grateful to the judges who upheld these constitutional principles and gave my case the careful, deliberate consideration it deserved,” said Suri in a statement after the appeals court ruling. “I remain, as ever, committed to the pursuit of justice through lawful and peaceful means. We should remember that a democracy without an accessible writ of habeas corpus is a democracy in name only; as the honorable court so aptly observed, the scope of habeas corpus must not be subject to manipulation by those whose power it is designed to restrain.’ I am proud of those who fought for me, and I am proud of every moment of life. Be courageous and stand for justice. Free Palestine.”

Salah Sarsour

The deportation hearing for Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, has begun.

Salah Sarsour, a Palestinian legal permanent resident, was detained by ICE agents in March and held at Clay County Jail in Indiana for nearly three months, before a judge ordered his release in June.

The Trump administration claims that Sarsour, who has been living in the United States for 30 years, lied on his green card application and insists he is a “terrorist” because he was convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers as a young person. Sarsour’s lawyers say that the conviction was coerced, as Sarsour was tortured while in Israeli prison.

At the first of Sarsour’s hearings, his lawyers called Sari Bashi, a human rights lawyer based in Israel, to testify.

Here’s a description of that testimony from Wisconsin Public Radio:

Bashi, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, spoke about the conditions under which Sarsour was detained and what he might have faced in Israeli jails. She said that during the First Intifada — a period of Palestinian unrest and both violent and nonviolent protest between 1987 and 1993 — tens of thousands of young men were arrested.

She testified that the Israeli government maintained a very high conviction rate, which she argued is partly a result of coercion, such as sleep deprivation, placing prisoners in stress positions or threatening their families with physical and sexual violence. She said that it’s not unusual for detainees to sign confessions written out in Hebrew, whether or not they could read that language, and said that the Moscovia Detention Centre, where Sarsour was held, was and is notorious for its treatment of prisoners.

Last week, Sarsour published an op-ed in USA Today, where he says the U.S. government has targeted him over his support for Palestine.

“My case is part of a broader retaliatory pattern targeting those who have worked to expose Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he writes. “The aim is simple and should give us all pause: to have a chilling effect on constitutionally protected free speech that the government dislikes.”

In the op-ed, Sarsour also details his mistreatment while in the Indiana ICE jail earlier this year:

I was denied appropriate testing and proper nutrition needed for my Type 2 diabetes, losing at least 30 pounds while in custody.

Basic religious accommodations, like halal food and mandatory Friday congregational prayers, were not reasonably provided, and I faced disruptions to and ridicule of my obligatory dawn prayers. 

The Department of Homeland Security has claimed that all people in ICE custody get three meals a day and “proper medical treatment.”

Aspects of my confinement were hauntingly reminiscent of my experience growing up under a brutal Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, where we became accustomed to violent, humiliating treatment at the hands of Israeli soldiers. 

Sarsour’s immigration proceedings will continue tomorrow.

Further Reading

• Mother Jones: Mahmoud Khalil Is Suing the White House and Heritage Foundation
• Al Jazeera: ‘Active in BDS’: Document reveals how Israel scrutinized global NGOs
• POLITICO: Trump administration activates never-before-used ‘alien terrorist’ deportation court
• Just Security: No, Trump Can’t Withhold Anti-Terrorism Funds to Pressure States to Change Their Election Rules
• Truthout: House Republicans Subpoena Left-Wing Groups Amid Trump Administration Crackdown
• NPR: Trump’s new legal weapon for prosecuting protestors