The US Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court on Monday, 21 September 2026, to review the ruling that freed Indian researcher Badar Khan Suri of Georgetown University, who advocated for Palestinian rights and opposed Israel’s war in Gaza, according to The Georgetown Voice and Al Jazeera.

The petition, docketed as Trump v. Khan Suri, asks whether federal immigration law barred a lower-court judge from ordering the release of a noncitizen held while removal proceedings are under way, and argues that rulings such as the Fourth Circuit’s give detainees a route to challenge deportation outside immigration courts. Suri, who holds a J-1 exchange visa, was detained in March 2025 by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and spent 58 days in custody; Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ordered his release in May 2025, and in July 2026 the Fourth Circuit ruled 2-1 that he should remain out of detention. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the ruling is “practically disastrous”; the Third Circuit, in January 2026, in the case of activist Mahmoud Khalil, and the Second Circuit, in July, in the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, reached the opposite conclusion, and the Justice Department asked the court to take Khalil’s case as well. Suri also faces a separate immigration case, which opened on 15 September 2026, to decide whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can deport him.