DOJ asks Supreme Court to detain Palestinian scholar — SkimNews
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- The Department of Justice petitioned the Supreme Court on Monday to overturn a ruling that freed Badar Khan Suri, an Indian citizen and Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow detained since March 2025 over his pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses.
- Suri was transferred to Texas after his arrest and released in May 2025 by a district court judge who found he would likely succeed in proving his detention was retaliation for constitutionally protected speech; he resides in Virginia with his US-citizen wife.
- The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in July that nothing barred a judge from hearing a constitutional challenge to someone's detention even in deportation proceedings — the precedent the DOJ is now challenging.
- Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the appeals court's ruling "practically disastrous," arguing it could let detainees nationwide challenge deportations outside immigration court.
- Sauer urged the justices to also take up Mahmoud Khalil's case, a Columbia University pro-Palestinian activist whose release was overturned by a different appeals court earlier this year, so the justices could resolve the circuit split in one ruling.
- Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown's Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, part of the university's School of Foreign Service.
Why it matters: Sauer is asking the justices not just to lock up one scholar but to strip federal courts of authority to review immigration detentions on constitutional grounds; bundling the case with Khalil's means a single Supreme Court ruling could resolve the circuit split and reshape how every foreign national detained for political speech can challenge deportation nationwide.
Ask SkimNews
