WASHINGTON — Twenty-two Republican state attorneys general urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, October 20, to take up the Trump administration's challenge to the release of Georgetown University postdoctoral researcher Badar Khan Suri from immigration detention, The Hoya reported. Law360 also reported on Tuesday that the Republican-led states backed the administration's bid to limit immigrant habeas petitions.

The states' amicus brief — the first time state governments have intervened in Khan Suri's proceedings — supports the U.S. Department of Justice's September 21 appeal, which argues that federal courts do not have jurisdiction to free noncitizens from immigration detention. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled the opposite in July, keeping Khan Suri out of detention while his immigration case proceeds.

"A rule that invites every detainee to seek release in district court, on a showing no immigration judge ever reviewed, will produce more releases," Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, who led the coalition, wrote in the brief. "When released aliens do not appear, state and local law enforcement, schools, hospitals and social-service agencies bear the consequences."

Khan Suri, a citizen of India who came to the United States in 2022 on a J-1 visa to work as a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown, was arrested by ICE officers outside his home in Rosslyn, Virginia, in March 2025 and was freed in May 2025 on a district court's orders. The government says Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined his presence could have serious adverse foreign-policy consequences — an allegation Khan Suri denies; the district court that freed him found the government likely violated the First Amendment by targeting him for protected speech and familial associations, according to earlier reporting on the case. Those underlying allegations remain contested and are not what the Supreme Court is being asked to decide: the appeal is about which court has the power to order a detainee's release.

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will take the case. Khan Suri's lawyers have until November 20 to file a response, The Hoya reported.

Sources: The Hoya, October 20, 2026; Law360 immigration coverage, October 20, 2026.