Act­iv­ist deten­tion, DHS alleg­a­tions raise ques­tions

4/12/26 Reposted from pressreader.com

Feds provide no evid­ence for ter­ror fund­ing claim

Salah Sar­sour, the pres­id­ent of the Islamic Soci­ety of Mil­wau­kee’s board of dir­ect­ors and a pro-Palestinian act­iv­ist, remains in cus­tody at a fed­eral immig­ra­tion deten­tion cen­ter in Indi­ana.

Sup­port­ers said his arrest by U.S. Immig­ra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment was polit­ic­ally motiv­ated and aligned with Israeli gov­ern­ment interests. His deport­a­tion doc­u­ments said Sar­sour, who has no crim­inal record in the U.S. and is a law­ful per­man­ent res­id­ent, is a threat to U.S. for­eign policy, accord­ing to his attor­ney, Mun­jed Ahmad.

The Depart­ment of Home­land Secur­ity, mean­while, poin­ted to Sar­sour’s two arrests by Israeli forces in the West Bank, includ­ing a con­vic­tion as a teen­ager. DHS also alleged Sar­sour is “sus­pec­ted of fund­ing ter­ror organ­iz­a­tions and lying on immig­ra­tion forms” but provided no evid­ence when the Journal Sen­tinel asked.

Sar­sour and his attor­neys plan to fight his deport­a­tion and are fil­ing a habeas cor­pus peti­tion to argue his ongo­ing deten­tion is illegal.

Who is Salah Sar­sour?

Sar­sour, 53, of Frank­lin, owns three fur­niture stores in Mil­wau­kee. He has lived in the U.S. for more than 32 years.

He has held a volun­teer pos­i­tion as pres­id­ent of the Islamic Soci­ety of Mil­wau­kee’s board of dir­ect­ors for five years. He is also a board mem­ber of Amer­ican Muslims for Palestine, a national advocacy organ­iz­a­tion, and has been a national act­iv­ist on pro-Palestinian causes.

What is Salah Sar­sour’s legal status?

Sar­sour has a green card, or law­ful per­man­ent res­id­ency, which has been renewed repeatedly by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. His wife and six chil­dren are U.S. cit­izens, and he has nine grand­chil­dren.

Sar­sour was born and grew up in the West Bank, the Israeli-occu­pied Palestinian ter­rit­ory. ICE describes him as a Jord­anian national, and the ICE detainee loc­ator web­site lis­ted his coun­try of birth as Jordan. The West Bank or the Palestinian ter­rit­or­ies are not options in a drop­down menu of coun­tries. The West Bank was admin­is­trat­ively run by Jordan for a time in the mid-20th cen­tury.

What happened to Salah Sar­sour?

ICE agents sur­roun­ded Sar­sour out­side a build­ing he owns, where he was pick­ing up mail, and detained him on March 30, said Oth­man Atta, the exec­ut­ive dir­ector of the Islamic Soci­ety of Mil­wau­kee. Sar­sour told Atta that he coun­ted 12 fed­eral vehicles.

DHS said it worked with the U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice to take Sar­sour into cus­tody.

The agents first took Sar­sour to the ICE facil­ity in Broad­view, Illinois. He is cur­rently being held at the Clay County Jail in Brazil, Indi­ana, accord­ing to the agency’s online detainee loc­ator. Brazil is 60 miles south­w­est of Indi­ana­polis.

What hap­pens next for Salah Sar­sour?

Sar­sour can­not post bail to leave the deten­tion cen­ter, Atta said, because ICE detained him on the grounds that he is a for­eign policy threat. He is await­ing a deport­a­tion hear­ing in mid-April, but the hear­ing may be pushed back, Ahmad said.

The doc­u­ment start­ing Sar­sour’s deport­a­tion pro­cess, called a “Notice to Appear,” said that Sec­ret­ary of State Marco Rubio determ­ined he “poses an adverse con­sequence to for­eign policy con­sid­er­a­tions,” Ahmad said.

What does DHS allege, and how do Sar­sour’s sup­port­ers respond?

The deport­a­tion doc­u­ments focus on Sar­sour’s arrest by Israeli author­it­ies as a 15-year-old in the West Bank, and another arrest as an adult in 1995 when he returned on a trip. The doc­u­ments do not allege Sar­sour sup­por­ted Hamas dur­ing his time in the U.S., Atta said.

The charges related to that 1995 arrest were later dropped, Atta said. He attrib­uted the 1995 arrest to har­ass­ment tac­tics by the Israeli gov­ern­ment.

DHS said Sar­sour has “con­vic­tions in Israel for throw­ing a Molotov cock­tail at the homes of Israeli armed forces and illeg­ally attempt­ing to pos­sess weapons and ammuni­tion.”

Ahmad described those con­vic­tions as “fab­ric­ated charges” from an Israeli mil­it­ary “kangaroo court.”

Israeli mil­it­ary courts in the West Bank have a 96% con­vic­tion rate and a his­tory of extract­ing con­fes­sions under duress or even through tor­ture, the human rights group B’Tselem says. Israel denies this.

DHS provided no details to back up its alleg­a­tion that Sar­sour was “sus­pec­ted of fund­ing ter­ror organ­iz­a­tions.” Ahmad “cat­egor­ic­ally, unequi­voc­ally” denied that Sar­sour has any ties to any ter­ror­ist organ­iz­a­tions.

Did Salah Sar­sour lie on his immig­ra­tion paper­work?

Sar­sour arrived in the U.S. with an approved immig­rant visa – a con­di­tional green card – in 1993, Ahmad said.

DHS said that Sar­sour lied on his immig­ra­tion paper­work in 1998 when he switched to a “per­man­ent” green card.

Atta and Ahmad said that wasn’t accur­ate because U.S. immig­ra­tion offi­cials were aware of his arrests because they vis­ited him and ques­tioned him about them in the ’90s, and they con­tin­ued renew­ing his green card for about three dec­ades.

Ahmad said the gov­ern­ment’s alleg­a­tion is “disin­genu­ous,” and “he was fully vet­ted before he came to the U.S.”