Deportation Case of Palestinian Activist Salah Sarsour Tests First Amendment

A federal immigration court in Chicago held the fourth and final removal hearing on the Trump administration’s attempt to deport Palestinian American human rights activist Salah Sarsour on Monday, September 14. Sarsour himself has argued the case is a major test of the First Amendment under President Donald Trump’s authoritarian crackdown on immigrants and dissent.

One of multiple advocates for Palestine liberation who were doxxed by Zionist groups and targeted by the Trump administration amid mass protests against Israel’s destruction of Gaza, Sarsour has been a lawful permanent resident for 32 years and lives with his family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. More than a dozen federal agents arrested Sarsour as he left his home on March 30. The case continues to make headlines in Wisconsin, where Sarsour is the president of the state’s largest mosque.

“In a brazen assault on the First Amendment and an affront to the Constitution, I believe I was targeted, arrested and detained by the Trump administration for speaking out against the ongoing atrocities Israel is committing, just as I and so many others believe that Mahmoud Khalil, Sami Hamdi, Yaacub Ira [Vijandre] , Leqaa Kordia and others were before me,” Sarsour wrote in an op-ed for USA Today on July 20.

On September 12, the Council on American-Islamic Relations presented Sarsour with its “Courage Under Fire” award for his “steadfast commitment to Palestinian human rights and his Milwaukee Muslim community, even in the face of detention and intimidation.” The Department of Homeland Security has baselessly smeared Sarsour, who is a board member of American Muslims for Palestine, as a “terrorist,” a flimsy label that Trump’s underlings have repeatedly pinned on protesters and human rights defenders who get in their way.

Sarsour’s arrest came just a few weeks after Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon named American Muslims for Palestine as one of the groups that the Trump administration is working to “dismantle” following their participation in protests against ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Along with Jewish pro-peace groups, American Muslims for Palestine is also listed among the targets of Project Esther, a campaign by the far right Heritage Foundation that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

“He has never been charged with, let alone convicted, of a crime in the United States,” Patrick Taurel, Sarsour’s lead immigration attorney, told reporters on Monday. “ICE is seeking to deport him on the basis of his pro-Palestine speech.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement held Sarsour in an ICE jail in Gary, Indiana, hours away from his family and support network in Milwaukee. Like many others incarcerated in the Trump administration’s byzantine network of formal prisons, warehouse jails, and lethal detention camps for immigrants, Sarsour suffered medical neglect and lost 30 pounds, according to his legal support team. Sarsour, a Type 2 diabetic, said he was unable to regularly test his blood sugar, his team said.

Sarsour’s incarceration by ICE was not his first time behind bars. In a previous hearing, Sarsour’s attorneys and expert witnesses said he was jailed and tortured by Israel as a teenager and suffers from PTSD. After being imprisoned twice in occupied Palestine, Sarsour left his home in the West Bank and came to the United States in 1993. He received a green card to become a permanent resident in the U.S. in 1998 and built a family and business in Milwaukee, where he is now a respected community organizer. Protests erupted in Milwaukee after his arrest, and Sarsour has since received an outpouring of support across the nation, including from Jewish peace activists.

After Sarsour had spent 81 days in detention, a judge ordered his release on June 18. The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted pro-Palestine activists under an obscure section of federal law that allows Secretary of State Marco Rubio to strip non-citizens of their legal status by claiming that they threaten U.S. foreign policy goals. In June, former Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil was released from ICE custody after a judge ruled that Rubio’s order against him was likely unconstitutional.

Brother Will Perry, former executive director of the Milwaukee Islamic Da’wah Center and Sarsour’s friend and colleague, said the Trump administration has been hypocritical about free speech since taking office last year, but the problem is not new for human rights defenders. As a longtime leader of Milwaukee’s Black and Muslim community, Perry said the First Amendment’s speech protections have only applied to certain people and not others for much of U.S. history.

“When you speak up against the establishment, you are going to get that sort of aggressive treatment, from being locked up to being kidnapped to verbal abuse,” Perry told Truthout in April.

Taurel said the primary reason for the deportation proceedings against Sarsour is his speech in support of Palestine and against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. However, the Department of Homeland Security also presented charges dating back decades, claiming in press statements that a teenage Sarsour threw a “Molotov cocktail” at the homes of “Israeli armed forces.”

Taurel said Sarsour did not throw a Molotov cocktail. In fact, Taurel said a teenage Sarsour was arrested by Israel for allegedly throwing stones back in 1988, participating in a longstanding form of protest among Palestinian children living under occupation. At a previous hearing, Taurel said a sociologist testified that throwing stones is one of the only ways that Palestinian children can find political agency and express dissent.

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“It’s screaming into the void that they don’t approve of the occupation,” Taurel said of stone throwing.

Unlike the young Israeli settlers in the West Bank who regularly spark deadly violence but largely enjoy impunity, Palestinian children who throw stones are tried in military courts where they are separated from family and have few legal rights. Since Sarsour was arrested for throwing stones in 1988, the situation in the West Bank has only grown more tense as diplomatic negotiations have failed and Jewish-only settlements have expanded in violation of international law.

Under Israeli occupation, Palestinians are subject to a deeply unequal justice system. Palestinians in the West Bank are tried in military courts, whereas violent Israeli settlers, who are rarely prosecuted despite regularly violating Israeli and international law, are tried in civilian rather than military courts, if at all. As of July 20, Israeli settlers in “state-backed terror squads” had killed at least 18 Palestinians in the West Bank so far this year in a sustained campaign of ethnic cleansing, according to the United Nations human rights office.

In 1994, Sarsour was again in Israeli custody after intelligence services accused him of attempting to purchase a weapon for his brother-in-law, who was accused of being a member of Hamas. However, Taurel said the brother-in-law was a business owner, not a militant, and Israeli police were unable to prove the alleged Hamas ties. Sarsour was eventually released on a plea deal.

“Even the Israeli prosecutors believed that he had not done what they accused him of doing, because if they did, they wouldn’t have agreed to the deal,” Taurel said, referring to Israel’s hard-line policies toward Hamas.

The final hearing on Monday included closing arguments and a cross-examination of Jawad Boulos, an attorney who represented Sarsour in Israeli military court in 1988 and 1994 and testified that Sarsour was severely tortured and coerced into confessing to the offenses the U.S. government is now relying on to deport him. Sari Bashi, an Israeli human rights attorney and executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said in a previous hearing that victims of torture in Israel’s legal system often confess to crimes they did not commit.

“People will do whatever they think will get them out, released, as quickly as possible,” Bashi said. “They just want to make that stop.”

Taurel pointed out that the U.S. government has known about Sarsour and his persecution by Israel for decades, but the Trump administration is only now scraping the record years later in order to find reasons to punish Sarsour for speaking out against Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank.

“The other charges we’ve been fighting about in court are pretextual, trumped up, and do not withstand scrutiny,” Taurel said.

Taurel expects a decision from the court within a few weeks. Even if a judge decides that the administration can remove Sarsour from his home of 32 years and deport him to occupied Palestine, Taurel said attorneys will then argue over whether he is eligible for humanitarian relief as a refugee in order to stay with his family in Wisconsin. Sarsour can only be deported if the judge rules that he is not eligible for such relief, Taurel said.

“I think it’s very possible we will have resolution prior to that,” Taurel said.

The administration also accused Sarsour of lying on immigration paperwork decades ago and produced a voter registration card filled out with his name; Sarsour said he had never seen the registration card. Taurel said the government has known about Sarsour’s incarceration in Israel for years and asserted that Sarsour has never attempted to vote. The case is really about freedom of speech, not “terrorism” or mistakes on paperwork, Taurel said, adding that the government should give Sarsour’s green card back and apologize to him and his family.

“I don’t know how the immigration judge will rule, but I know that Mr. Sarsour will keep fighting, with the support of his community behind him, because keeping him here is about protecting everyone’s constitutional right to free expression,” Taurel said.

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