Persecution of Indian students and academics in US Academic institutions
Persecution of Indian students and academics in US Academic institutions
On 17 March 2025, a Georgetown University researcher, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral fellow who was studying and teaching on a student visa, was arrested outside his home in Virginia and has been detained by federal immigration authorities amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on student activists whom, according to court papers, the government accuses of opposing American foreign policy. Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which is part of the university’s School of Foreign Service. According to his court petition and a university directory, he is teaching a class this semester on “Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia.” Suri has a Ph.D. in peace and conflict studies from the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi in 2020, where he examined state building in Afghanistan and Iraq. The faculty at Georgetown University’s center for Muslim-Christian understanding is protesting the detention of Badar Khan Suri calling his arrest and relocation to Louisiana an “authoritarian weaponization of the legal system to attack political speech that is protected by the First Amendment.”
According to his lawyer, Suri is being punished because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife — who is a U.S. citizen — and because the government suspects that he and his wife oppose U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.
Suri’s detention is the latest in a string of immigration-related arrests that, according to Trump, is just a start to target “terrorist sympathizers” or people who have “engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
The government has justified Khan Suri’s detention using a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that says that a non-U.S. citizen is deportable if the U.S. secretary of state “has reasonable ground to believe” their presence or activities in the U.S. “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Suri's (infrequent)social media posts, showed trenchant criticism of Israel's attacks on Gaza, including India's support for Israel. In a June 6, 2024 post, Suri critiqued the Modi government for its purported support for Israel and abandonment of Palestine after a Palestinian network posted a video of a missile fragment with an India imprint on it. "From being an ally of Palestinians, to enabler of a genocide. What a disgrace for Made in India, to supply missiles to Israel so that Palestinian children can be butchered. Change of values for blood money. Shame," he wrote.
Suri is the second Indian to be swept up in US President Donald Trump’s campaign against pro-Palestine protests that have engulfed several universities across the US.
Ranjani Srinivasan, a PhD student at Columbia University in New York, fearing detention after her student visa was revoked, felt compelled to leave the US for Canada on March 11. She was accused of “supporting Hamas,” though the Trump administration has yet to provide any such evidence.
There are thousands of Indian nationals enrolled in US universities. Trump has called for the arrest, deportation and expulsion of students who “support terrorism” , a euphemism for merely showing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Students, Indian and others who are legally in the US, will have to live with the constant fear of persecution for expressing contrarian views to the regime in power. Academic institutions are no longer able or willing to protect students.
Instead of voicing concern for the safety and dignity of its citizens, the Indian government has responded by doubling down on the U.S. action, claiming that Indians abroad should obey local laws. This is to be expected from a government that recently received deportees in military planes, without an iota of censure (unlike the Mexican and Colombian examples) and regularly handles student protests of both its own and international students (see recent testimonies of students from Nepal and Palestine) with policing, suspensions, and jails.
InSAF India condemns the actions of the Trump govt and stands in solidarity with students and academics who have been arrested and those who live in the shadow of possible future persecution for merely exercising their first amendment rights to free speech and political views. We welcome the temporary relief given by the US court to Badar Khan Suri’s deportation and hope for justice from the judiciary.