ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) 鈥 One of the lowest moments of Badar Khan Suri鈥檚 two months in federal custody was being crammed onto an airplane with hundreds of other shackled prisoners.
The Trump administration was the Georgetown University scholar over statements he made against Israel鈥檚 war in Gaza. The guards wouldn’t say where they were headed, but the Indian national was convinced it was out of the United States.
Then Khan Suri had to use the plane鈥檚 bathroom. He said the guards refused to unshackle his wrists.
鈥淭hey said, 鈥楴o, you have to use it like this or do it in your trousers,鈥欌 Khan Suri recalled of the trip, taking him to a Louisiana detention center. 鈥淭hey were behaving as if we were animals.鈥
Khan Suri, 41, as his lawsuit against the U.S.‘s deportation case continues. In an interview with The Associated Press, he spoke Thursday of a cramped cell, crowded with other detainees, where he waited anxiously, fearful about what would happen next.
He also addressed the Trump administration’s accusations that he spread 鈥淗amas propaganda.鈥 Khan Suri said he only spoke in support of Palestinians, who are going through an 鈥渦nprecedented, livestreamed genocide.鈥
鈥淚 don鈥檛 support Hamas,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 support Palestine. I support Palestinians. And it is so deceiving for some people who just publish canards ... They will just replace Palestine with Hamas.鈥
Yet, because of his comments, he said U.S. authorities treated him as if he had committed a high-level crime. Fellow inmates said his red uniform was reserved for the most dangerous offenders.
鈥淚 said, 鈥橬o, I鈥檓 just a university teacher. I did nothing,鈥 Khan Suri recalled.
Still, there were rays of hope. He said more than a hundred people from the Georgetown community wrote letters on his behalf to the federal judge overseeing his case, including some who are Jewish.
A crowd also greeted him when he arrived back in the Washington, D.C., area.
鈥淗indus, Jews, Christians, Muslims 鈥 everyone together,鈥 said Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow who studies religion, peace and violence. 鈥淭hat is the reality I want to live with. That鈥檚 the reality I want to die for. Those people together.鈥
鈥業 was not in Russia or North Korea鈥
U.S. Immigration authorities have detained international college students from across the country 鈥 many of whom participated in over 鈥 since the early days of Trump’s second administration.
The administration has said it revoked Khan Suri鈥檚 visa because he was 鈥渟preading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” while also citing his connections to 鈥渁 senior advisor to Hamas,鈥 which court records indicate is his .
Saleh is a Palestinian American whose father worked with the Hamas-backed Gazan government in the early 2000s, but before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Khan Suri’s attorneys have said. They also said he barely knew his father-in-law, Ahmed Yousef.
Khan Suri鈥檚 attorneys said he wouldn’t comment on Yousef during Thursday鈥檚 interview, which mostly covered his arrest and time in custody. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Khan Suri’s statements.
Khan Suri said he was arrested just after he taught his weekly class on minority rights and the majority. Masked police in plain clothes pulled up in an unmarked car outside his suburban Washington home.
They showed no documents, he said. Other than saying his visa was being revoked, they refused to explain the reason for his arrest, which he described it as a 鈥渒idnapping.”
鈥淭his is not some authoritarian regime,鈥 Khan Suri said. 鈥淚 was not in Russia or North Korea. I was in the best place in the world. So, I was shocked.鈥
鈥楬ow can this be happening?鈥
As police whisked him away, Khan Suri realized they wanted to deport him.
The 鈥渄ehumanizing procedures鈥 came next: A finger scan, a DNA cotton swab and chains binding his wrists, waist and ankles, he said. They also said he could talk to his wife at a detention center in Virginia, but 鈥渢hat never happened.”
He said he slept on a floor without a blanket and used a toilet monitored by a camera. The next day, he said he and other detainees were placed in a van, which soon rolled up to an airplane.
鈥淚 asked them where I am going now? Nobody would reply anything,鈥 Khan Suri said. 鈥淭hey just pushed us in.鈥
He said the bathroom situation did not get better at a federal detention center in Louisiana, where Khan Suri was taken next. It lacked a privacy barrier and was also watched by a camera.
He was finally able to call his wife, but he said she couldn’t hear him. Khan Suri said he was 鈥渆xtremely terrified,鈥 thinking that someone was making his family not reply.
He was not able to speak to a lawyer, while fellow inmates said everyone there is deported within three days, Khan Suri said.
鈥淚 was crying from inside, ‘How can this be happening?” he said. 鈥淎 few hours back, I was in Georgetown teaching my students, talking about peace and conflict analysis.鈥
Through the abyss
Khan Suri said his first seven or eight days of captivity were the same: 鈥淪ame terror. Same fear. Same uncertainty. Same mockery of rule of law. Same mockery of due process.鈥
鈥淚 was going more and more deeper, reaching to my abyss,鈥 he added. 鈥淎nd I was discovering that the abyss also has more and more depth.鈥
But he was still praying five times a day, uncertain which direction Mecca was.
鈥淚 was very strong like that, that God will help me. American Constitution will help me. American people will help me,鈥 he said.
Afterward, Khan Suri was transferred to a detention facility in Texas, where he said he slept on the floor of a crowded cell for the first two weeks. Eventually, he got his own cot.
And, finally, he was allowed to speak to his attorneys, which he said led to a change in treatment. Khan Suri, who is Muslim, soon received a Quran and then a prayer rug. As for the rug, he rolled it up like it was his young son.
鈥淢y eyes would become wet, and I would give that blanket a hug as my son so that this hug should reach him,鈥 Khan Suri said. 鈥淎nd when I came back, he told me the same, that he was hugging a pillow.鈥
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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
