Trump admin asks top US court to reverse pro-Palestinian scholar's release

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn the decision to release a Georgetown University scholar who had advocated for Palestinian rights and opposed Israel's war in Gaza. Georgetown scholar and postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri was released last year after a judge heard claims that his detention violated his due process and free speech rights under the US Constitution. On Monday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) petitioned the high court to consider whether federal immigration law barred the lower-court judge from ordering Suri's release. Suri, an Indian citizen, was first arrested by masked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers outside his home in Rosslyn, Virginia, in March 2025 amid the Trump administration's targeted crackdown and mass deportation campaigns of foreign nationals and visa holders engaged in pro-Palestinian activism across college ‌campuses. At the time, critics accused the Trump administration of targeting him based on his familial ties. His wife is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, a former adviser to assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. Suri was brought to Texas after his detention and freed in May 2025 on the orders of a district court judge, on the grounds that he was likely to succeed in proving his arrest was in retaliation for his constitutionally protected speech. The Trump administration has argued that the judge should not have interfered in the case. In July, the Virginia-based US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision that nothing prevented a lower-court judge from hearing a challenge to someone's allegedly unconstitutional detention, even if it related to deportation proceedings pending before the immigration courts. Advertisement Solicitor General D John Sauer argued that the Fourth Circuit's ruling threatened nationwide immigration enforcement by letting detainees bypass immigration courts to contest their deportations. 'That is all practically ⁠disastrous,' Sauer said. Sauer noted that a different appeals court had reached the opposite conclusion earlier this year, overturning a ruling that freed pro-Palestinian activist and former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who had been released on bail in June last year after spending more than 100 days in ICE detention. In January, the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that lower federal district courts lacked subject matter jurisdiction to hear immigration or detention challenges while active removal proceedings are ongoing. While the order did not influence the core First Amendment arguments in Khalil's case, it stripped away crucial procedural safeguards.