ICE Loses Challenge to Court Order to Release Georgetown Scholar

A federal district court in Virginia properly exercised jurisdiction over the habeas corpus petition filed by a Georgetown University scholar who was detained by ICE and moved multiple times before ending up in Texas, the Fourth Circuit said Tuesday.

Badar Khan Suri was held in an unknown location by an unknown custodian and his attorney had no way of knowing where he was, Judge James Andrew Wynn said for the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Jurisdiction over Suri’s habeas corpus petition was therefore proper in his last known location, which was in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Wynn said.

Suri spoke out online against the war in Gaza and the US State Department determined that he was a threat to US foreign policy interests. At 9:30 p.m. on March 17, 2025, he was arrested in Rosslyn, Va., and taken to an ICE field office in Chantilly, Va. Within hours, he was moved to a facility in Farmville, Va.

Suri called his wife while he was in Farmville, but was moved later that night to Richmond, Va. A few hours later, he was flown to Louisiana. On March 21, Suri was driven to Texas.

Suri’s last known location was Farmville. So his attorney filed his habeas petition on March 18 in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Farmville is located. The petition alleged that Suri’s detention was in retaliation for him exercising his First Amendment rights.

The government said that the petition should have been filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where Suri was located. The judge in the Eastern District of Virginia disagreed, saying that it appeared that the government’s goal in moving Suri so much was to make it difficult for his attorney to find him and to transfer him to its chosen forum.

The government appealed to the Fourth Circuit a March 20 order not to remove Suri from the US and a May 14 order that he be released.

Applying the unknown custodian exception to the general rule that detainees must be in the physically present in a district for the court to have jurisdiction over a habeas corpus petition, the Fourth Circuit rejected the government’s challenge.

If the government moves a detainee from a district and their attorney can’t discover their location, that attorney must be able to file a habeas petition in the detainee’s last-known location against their ultimate custodian, the court said.

Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin joined the opinion.

Dissenting Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said that the majority’s opinion left the parties open to proceedings in both the federal district court and before an immigration judge.

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Virginia, Immigrant & Non-citizen Rights Clinic, and Center for Constitution Rights represent Suri. The US Department of Justice represents the government.

The case is Suri v. Trump, 4th Cir., No. 25-01560, 7/1/25.