After ICE detention, Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri reflects on parenting from behind bars

Khan Suri said parenting from detention “was one of the most heartbreaking parts of my experience — but also the one that kept me going.”

For months while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, Badar Khan Suri, the Georgetown University postdoctoral scholar who was targeted for deportation by the Trump administration, said he spun a tale for his 5-year-old sons to help them cope with his absence.

“For my younger twins, I created a story they could hold on to: I told them I was traveling and had gotten lost somewhere in the clouds, trying to find my way back home,” Khan Suri said in an email to NBC News.

It was one of the ways, Khan Suri said, that he attempted to continue to parent his three children “with love, creativity and resilience” from detention. Now, just over a month since his release from an ICE facility in Texas, Khan Suri reflected on his experience with family separation, one that he said took a significant toll on his wife and children.

Khan Suri credits his wife, Maphaz Ahmad Yousef, with being a critical support system for their children, calling her a “blessing.” However, he’s still processing the pain of separation, he said.

Badar Khan Suri hugging his wife Maphaz Saleh at Dulles airport on May 14, 2025.Phuong Tran / ACLU-VA“For my family also, I feel the power dynamic changed. I am no more the provider or protector I once was,” he said. “But I have survivor’s clarity, as I saw the injustice. I am rebuilding my journey with meaning and truth.”