Several Indian individuals who hold H-1B visas and Green Cards recently experienced unexpected deportations or detention procedures while raising public worries about immigration policies Islated by the Donald Trump administration. Indian professionals working in the U.S. have started to feel uncertain due to several actions that appear tied to security concerns.
“The administration is taking the law in their own hands with blatant disregard to the judiciary of the nation,” New York City-based attorney Naresh Gehi told Newsweek.
Under Trump’s watch, Indian professionals with green cards have reported being questioned more frequently.
Indians in US haunted by Trump’s deportation measures
One such case is that of Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University graduate student from India, who was detained by federal immigration agents outside his Virginia home.
“Masked agents arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral fellow, outside his home in the Rosslyn neighbourhood of Arlington, Virginia, on Monday night, his lawyer said in a lawsuit fighting for his immediate release. The agents identified themselves as being with the Department of Homeland Security and told him the government had revoked his [student] visa,” the lawsuit says, cited by Politico.
Suri was placed in deportation proceedings under a rarely used immigration law provision allowing the Secretary of State to deport noncitizens if their presence is deemed a threat to U.S. foreign policy. His lawyer argues that Suri is being targeted due to his wife’s Palestinian American heritage.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, posted on X stating that Suri was accused of “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.” A federal judge has since blocked Suri’s deportation while the case is under review.
Similarly, Ranjani Srinivasan, a 37-year-old Indian Fulbright scholar at Columbia University’s visa, was revoked after being linked to pro-Palestinian campus protests.
ICE agents attempted to detain her at her apartment but were denied entry by her roommate. “In an interview, her roommate said that the agents had initially identified themselves as ‘police,’ declined to provide their badge numbers, saying they feared they would be doxxed, and stood to the side of the door so that they were not visible through the peephole,” The New York Times reported.
Srinivasan left the US for Canada the same night. DHS later accused her of advocating for “violence and terrorism” and praised her “self-deportation.” Officials claimed she failed to disclose past court summonses related to Columbia protests.
