More than 130 Jewish members of the Georgetown University community in Washington, D.C., released a signed statement Friday in support of Badar Khan Suri, a Muslim postdoctoral scholar and professor at the school who was arrested and targeted for deportation last month by the Trump administration.
Jewish faculty, staff, students and alumni wrote in the public statement that Trump is “weaponizing” the Jewish identity and faith, along with fears of antisemitism, to justify the arrest, detention and attempted deportation of Suri and other Muslim students and scholars.
The letter comes after Suri, whose attorneys filed a petition challenging his detainment, was arrested outside his apartment building in Virginia. Suri, who has been a postdoc at Georgetown for the past three years, was accused by the Department of Homeland Security of “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.”
The statement also criticizes the administration’s revocation of visas from international students who have engaged in political protests.
“While we may hold varying opinions and perspectives on Israel-Palestine, we all agree that the growing wave of politically motivated campus deportation efforts is an authoritarian move that harms the entire campus community,” the letter said. “We encourage Jews and everyone — at Georgetown and beyond — to take action and speak out.”
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields responded to NBC News, calling the group "radical activists" who "wouldn’t last a minute in Hamas-controlled Gaza."
"Their misguided virtue signaling is doing more to embolden Hamas than to end the war," Fields said in an email. "President Trump will always stand for peace and for the nation of Israel.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement sent to NPR that she disagreed with the group’s assertion that the administration’s actions are harming the greater student body.
“Pretty absurd mental gymnastics to believe that revoking visas of individuals who glorify and support terrorists, harass Jews and do the bidding of organizations that relish the killing of Americans and Jews, is in fact, making Jewish students less safe,” McLaughlin said.
In the letter, the group demanded the immediate release of Suri, an Indian national who has been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since his arrest last month, along with that of others who have been “unjustly detained.” The statement cites the cases of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University PhD candidate Rumeysa Ozturk, who were arrested within weeks of one another, as examples of the administration’s “transgressions of civil liberties.”
Additionally, the group called on Jewish community leaders and institutions like the nonprofits Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International, the largest Jewish student organizations in the world, to openly condemn the administration’s actions. They also asked Georgetown to protect its students’ rights to free speech, and for elected officials to push back on the deportations and “attacks on universities.”
“We are horrified to see this escalating authoritarian action that will only worsen and expand unless we act,” the letter said. “We urge everyone — especially our fellow Jewish community members, regardless of your political orientation — to make your voices heard however you are able.”
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, addressed Suri’s detention on X, saying that “Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.”
Suri’s attorney, Hassan Ahmad, previously told NBC News that he has never made any pro-Hamas or antisemitic comments, calling his detention “contemptible.” And Nader Hashemi, Suri’s supervisor, said that he was not particularly politically outspoken.
“He was not a public intellectual. He was just a humble young academic scholar,” said Hashemi, director of the school’s Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. “The shock and the trauma of this entire arrest … is just a reflection of the brutal authoritarianism of this Trump administration that is trying to inflict terror and trauma on society.”