In one of the Trump administration’s earliest crackdowns on free speech at universities, masked agents arrested a Georgetown scholar from India, father of three, and legal U.S. resident. Badar Khan Suri was accused of “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” after he criticized Israel’s assault on Gaza online. ICE held him for two months, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally sought to deport him, before a federal judge ordered his release.
Now, the government is once again moving to deport Suri – in a case that could set a major precedent for whether the U.S. can weaponize immigration enforcement to punish speech. Suri sits down with Mehdi to tell his story.
“I was metamorphosed into a subhuman Amazon package without any tag on me,” Suri says of his brutal detention. He was transferred from facility to facility, across multiple states, without notice to his wife and children.
Suri and Mehdi also discuss his costly legal battle, how he became a “scapegoat” for his Palestinian-American wife, and the genocide in Gaza.
But despite everything he has endured, Suri refuses to give up hope:
“Hopelessness is a crime,” he tells Mehdi. “Democracy is going down the hill, but we can still save it. And if we cannot save it here, where can we save it?”
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