The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision on Thursday upholding an earlier federal court ruling that ordered the release of Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University who was arrested by ICE in March 2025. Suri had been detained for nearly six weeks at a Texas detention center before a federal judge granted him bail. The appeals court also rejected the government’s effort to transfer the case from Virginia to Texas.
The ruling represents a significant victory for individuals challenging their detention through habeas corpus protections, which guarantee that persons held by the government may contest their confinement in federal court. However, the decision conflicts with two other recent appellate rulings that sided with the government in similar cases involving detained foreign nationals. In January, a separate appeals court upheld the government’s position regarding Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student, and earlier in the week, another appellate panel reached the same conclusion in the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student also detained by the government.
Those conflicting decisions created a divergence in judicial interpretation regarding whether lower court judges overstepped their authority when ordering the release of individuals in immigration detention. The court reviewing Suri’s case explicitly disagreed with the reasoning in Khalil’s case, calling it “absurd” to deny judicial review of detention claims. The panel argued that waiting for completion of immigration proceedings provides no remedy for those challenging the legality of their detention and would render unconstitutional detention “effectively unreviewable.”
The disagreement among the appellate courts sets the stage for likely Supreme Court review, particularly following an announcement that Khalil’s legal team intends to seek high court consideration. Such a decision would have implications for other detained immigrants, including Khan Suri and Mahdawi, who are seeking intervention from federal courts. The case touches on questions regarding whether immigration detention can be used to restrict First Amendment protections, as Suri was targeted over social media criticism concerning Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Neither the Justice Department nor the Department of Homeland Security immediately provided comment on the ruling. Civil rights advocates praised the decision as protecting constitutional guarantees against detention for speech.
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