AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

As the Trump administration escalates its attacks on pro-Palestine students and scholars, we turn to the case of Badar Khan Suri. Suri is originally from India, a Georgetown University professor and postdoctoral scholar on religion and peace processes in the Middle East and South Asia. Last Monday evening, he was ambushed by masked federal agents with the Homeland Security Department as he and his family returned to their home in Rosslyn, Virginia, after attending an iftar gathering for Ramadan. Suri was taken into custody without being charged or accused of any crime. He was told the federal government had revoked his visa.

Over the next 72 hours, Suri was transferred to multiple immigration detention centers. He’s currently jailed at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, separated from his wife, a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent, and his three children. Suri’s arrest came just days after federal agents apprehended Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who’s being jailed at a different ICE detention center in Louisiana. Both are being detained under a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which gives the U.S. secretary of state authority to begin deportation proceedings against any noncitizen deemed a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests — even a green card holder, like Mahmoud Khalil is. On Thursday, a federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting Suri while he fights his case.

DHS has accused Suri of, quote, “spreading Hamas propaganda” and claimed Suri has, quote, “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist,” without providing any evidence. Suri’s legal team says he’s being targeted for his political views and free speech, and pointed to an aggressive doxxing and smearing campaign by pro-Israel groups targeting Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh. She’s a graduate student at Georgetown and the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, a former political adviser to Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in Iran last year. Saleh previously worked in a civilian role at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Gaza and met Suri after he joined a humanitarian convoy to the besieged territory in 2011. The couple then lived in New Delhi.

Prior to Suri’s arrest, pro-Israel groups published a series of articles and video clips targeting Saleh and her family. One video clip was shared last month on the official X account of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. A photo of Salah and information about her, including her school and former employer, is also featured on an anonymously run website. Saleh’s father Ahmed Yousef lives in Gaza and left his position in the Hamas government more than a decade ago, becoming a frequent writer and commentator on Hamas for publications like The New York Times. He recently told the Times Suri, his son-in-law, wasn’t involved in any political activism on behalf of Hamas.

For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University, the director of the center where Badar Khan Suri was hired as a postdoctoral fellow, Georgetown’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

Professor Hashemi, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you explain what’s going on with Suri right now?

NADER HASHEMI: Well, it’s a very similar case to Mahmoud Khalil. One of the differences is that Suri, in contrast to Khalil, was not a political activist. He was just a very serious, young academic focusing on his teaching and his research. I think your description in the introduction provided a good background. He’s currently in detention, we believe, in Louisiana. He has a court date in May.

And, of course, his family is completely devastated. And he, himself, is completely bewildered, because this is a young man from India, you know, who doesn’t know anything about the politics of Israel-Palestine, who Campus Watch is, what the Canary Mission is all about, why he was even targeted. So this came as a shock to him, his colleagues at Georgetown and, of course, his family, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain exactly what happened. We’ve actually seen the video of Mahmoud Khalil, not to be confused with Suri. He’s the former Columbia graduate student. He and his wife, Dr. Abdalla, were also coming home from iftar, and they were confronted by men in plainclothes who didn’t have a warrant, in an unmarked car, and told to go with them. He ended up in Jena, Louisiana. Explain what happened to Badar Khan Suri.

NADER HASHEMI: So, last Monday, exactly a week ago, in the afternoon, some of the staff that work at my center noticed some suspicious men hanging outside. They were clearly out of place. We now believe these were federal agents trying to arrest Badar Khan Suri outside of his classroom. For some reason, they weren’t able to apprehend him on campus.

But roughly around 8:00 last Monday, as he was returning home after he broke his fast, agents arrested him. They were masked. There was an incident outside of his home. His young — one of his children witnessed the arrest. And then they told him, “Your visa had been revoked, and we’re going to deport you.” And then he was whisked off to a detention facility, I think, originally in Alexandria, Virginia, and then he was sent to Louisiana, I believe, but I’m not 100% sure, in the same detention facility where Mahmoud Khalil was being held. And that’s the story.

And so, then, immediately, there was an attempt to sort of get him legal representation, to support the family, and then to get, you know, university officials to respond appropriately.

AMY GOODMAN: Mapheze Saleh, the wife of Badar Khan Suri, wrote in a petition to the Eastern District Court of Virginia, quote, “Our children are in desperate need of their father and miss him dearly. They keep asking about him and when he will come back. I cannot bring myself to tell them what has really happened to him, although my eldest child understands he is in some kind of trouble. … I feel completely unsafe and can’t stop looking at the door, terrified that someone else will come and take me and the children away as well,” this American citizen said, who is the wife of Professor Suri. Can you respond to what she’s saying? And then talk about Georgetown’s response.

NADER HASHEMI: Yeah, so, the family here has been devastated. They’ve been shocked. The children are traumatized. I do believe the target here was not my colleague, Badar Khan Suri, but it was his wife, who’s a Palestinian from Gaza. They couldn’t arrest her, because she’s a U.S. citizen, so they went after a much easier target, her husband, who, of course, you know, has committed no crime. He was just doing his work. He’s not a political activist. And I think that that’s an important part of the story.

The other important part of the story here is that the origins of this begins on the right-wing social media sphere, where these, you know, extreme pro-Israel fanatics find a target, and they start tweeting about it, tagging the Israeli Embassy, tagging Marco Rubio. And then, within a few days, Rubio sends in the shock troops. That’s the background. So, the family is traumatized, the children, as well.

The university at Georgetown, I think, deserves some credit here, because they’ve been privately very supportive, but publicly cautious. Everyone is watching what’s happening at Columbia University. No one wants to see their university targeted in the same way that Columbia has been targeted. So, I would give my employer high marks for trying to navigate this situation and do the right thing.

And now there’s a lot of student-faculty mobilization on campus trying to provide support, trying to protest what’s happening, but also linking this to, you know, the ongoing genocide in Gaza. I think this is an important part of the story that we have to get out, that there’s an attempt here to silence any and all voices on campus that are critical of this genocide in Gaza.

And, of course, against the backdrop of this is this very deep-rooted anti-Palestinian bigotry that exists at the highest level of the American government, in particular in the Trump administration. Your listeners might recall that during the presidential campaign, on several occasions, Donald Trump used the word “Palestinian” as a slur to attack his political opponents. And so, it’s against that backdrop that the U.S. can support an ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has intensified in the last week. And, you know, the Democratic Party, as well, is guilty. And there’s been very little pushback.

So, this targeting of people who are just married to a Palestinian, that’s really the crime here that I think that my colleague is being charged with, is that he hasn’t done anything wrong, but he’s married to a Palestinian and that, you know, on rare occasions, he’s tweeted and expressed support for Palestinians suffering and the national rights of Palestinians. So he gets picked up because he’s an easy target, because he has — he’s on a visa, and so he can easily be deported from this country. I think those are the important elements of this story that, you know, I think people need to understand.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re about to talk about Columbia University and the agreement it’s made with the Trump administration. But before we go, I wanted to read two quotes, one from Joel Hellman, who is Georgetown dean of the School of Foreign Service, who released a statement on the detention of Badar Khan Suri that reads in part, quote, “During his time on campus, I am not aware that Dr. Suri has engaged in any illegal activity, nor has he posed a threat to the security of our campus. … As an individual, I am deeply concerned for the welfare of a member of our community and his family. As Dean, I am deeply troubled by the chilling effect such events could have on freedom of expression on this campus, which is, of course, at the very core of our mission. … We expect that the legal system will adjudicate this case fairly,” he said.

This comes as the dean of Georgetown’s Law School rejected a warning from the acting federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who said his office won’t consider Georgetown students for jobs, internships or fellowships until the law school ends diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin made that threat in an email on March 3rd, writing it’s unacceptable that Georgetown Law, quote, “continues to promote and teach DEI,” unquote. Dean William Treanor wrote in response, quote, “Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to [determine] its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution,” unquote. If you can, finally, in this last 30 seconds, respond?

NADER HASHEMI: Yeah, I’m glad you read those quotes. I think, you know, the Georgetown administration are trying to do the right thing.

What’s clearly happening here is we have an alliance between these MAGA Republicans and these extreme Israel supporters in this country, who are really trying to undermine the basic legal and political architecture of the United States and freedoms that we just took for granted. I never thought in a million years that what happened at Cornell, what happened at Columbia and what’s happening at Georgetown could happen in the United States.

So, this is a major assault on the American Constitution and on the basic idea of an independent university. That’s what’s at stake here. And so, everyone needs to mobilize. Everyone who cares about those values needs to mobilize and push back against this authoritarian juggernaut that’s coming to strangle all of us.

AMY GOODMAN: Nader Hashemi, professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University, director of the center where Badar Khan Suri was hired as postdoctoral fellow, Georgetown’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

Next up, the Trump administration says Columbia University is on track to regain $400 million in federal funding after the university yielded to the Trump administration’s demands. We’ll get response from former Columbia Law School professor Katherine Franke. Stay with us.