US judge rules in favor of deporting Wisconsin’s Muslim leader Salah Sarsour

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - CHICAGO — A US immigration judge in Chicago has ruled the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque can be deported under a controversial law that President Donald Trump’s administration has used against non-citizens advocating for Palestinian rights.

Judge Jayme Salinardi ruled on Wednesday that Palestinian-born Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, can be deported based in part on a memo by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that “his actions undermine US foreign policy to combat antisemitism around the world”, according to his lawyers.

Sarsour, a legal US resident and the president of Wisconsin’s largest Islamic organization, has been fighting the Trump administration’s efforts to deport him over the last six months. Now, after the federal court ruling in favor of his removal, he could be ordered to leave the country unless he secures asylum or another form of legal relief, according to The New York Times.

Sarsour, 53, who grew up in the West Bank and is a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, has lived in the United States for more than 30 years. He was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in March and held for about 80 days in Indiana before a judge ordered his release.

Sarsour's lawyers plan to appeal Tuesday's court ruling.

The government’s case against him goes back decades and crosses international borders. It cites charges that were brought against Sarsour by Israel during a Palestinian uprising when he was a teenager living in the occupied West Bank. Those charges resulted in his imprisonment.

He and his lawyers have argued that his detention by immigration officials this year was politically motivated, and they have accused the Trump administration of singling out pro-Palestinian speech and violating Sarsour’s First Amendment rights.

In an interview on Tuesday, before the decision, Sarsour said federal officials had targeted him and other community leaders and demonstrators who had supported the rights of Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war and who opposed American aid to Israel.

“I was not hiding,” he said. “I was saying that clearly. I believe they want to stop us.”

In an email on Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security applauded the ruling, calling Sarsour a “public safety threat” who had engaged in terrorist activity in the Middle East. The agency added that if a judge found that a person “has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period.”

In pursuing Sarsour’s deportation, the Trump administration asserted broad power under a Cold-War era statute that says that the secretary of state can deem noncitizens deportable if their presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

Congress has since tried to limit the power of that 1952 statute, and its use has been successfully challenged in court. Still, the Trump administration has used the statute to argue for the deportation of foreign students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, and to bring its case against Sarsour, according to his legal team.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last year that his department had used its authority to cancel hundreds of student visas.

In a statement shortly after Sarsour’s arrest, DHS said Sarsour had been convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli military members before he moved to the United States, and of illegally attempting to possess weapons and ammunition.

Sarsour has denied committing the crimes he was accused of in Israel, and his legal team said there was no documentation of a conviction for throwing Molotov cocktails.

In the interview on Tuesday, he said he was first arrested when he was 15. At that time, expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank had prompted frequent Palestinian uprisings there, including what is now known as the first intifada, which began in 1987.

Sarsour said he was tortured while in detention, and that he had signed documents he could not understand because they were in Hebrew. And in a statement on Wednesday, Sarsour said that “a foreign country’s false information and unjust military courts were used to trample on my rights and ignore the truth.”

Patrick Taurel, a lawyer for Sarsour, said on Wednesday that the government of Israel had no evidence for the crimes other than coerced confessions. “We know that Israeli military tribunals are not places where you receive anything resembling due process.”

According to DHS, Sarsour entered the United States as a conditional resident in 1993 and obtained a green card in 1998.

Over time, he became a business owner, a father of six and a grandfather of 10. ICE agents intercepted him while he was running an errand on March 30, and he was taken to a detention facility in Clay County, Indiana.

There, Sarsour said, he encountered a filthy environment where he could not worship as he wanted to, did not receive adequate care for his Type 2 diabetes and never saw the sun.

“Immediately it brought me these dark memories — what happened to me when I was a child in Palestine,” he said in the interview.

If Sarsour is eventually deported, it is not clear where he would go. The judge suggested that he would be sent to Jordan, an idea that Taurel challenged.