ICE detains Milwaukee Islamic Society president Salah Sarsour over decades-old West Bank record

On the morning of March 30, roughly a dozen federal vehicles surrounded Salah Sarsour outside a warehouse he owns on Milwaukee's south side. By his family's account, relayed by Islamic Society of Milwaukee executive director Othman Atta, an unmarked car drove at him on the wrong side of the street, and a plainclothes officer pointed a gun at him and asked for him by name before he was loaded into a van and told he was in federal immigration custody. Sarsour — a lawful permanent resident for more than 30 years, a businessman with no U.S. criminal record, and the five-year board president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's largest Islamic organization — was transported to the Broadview Detention Center in Illinois and then quickly transferred to a county jail in Indiana, complicating his counsel's access to him.

The Department of Homeland Security's public statement repeatedly called Sarsour a "terrorist" and an "illegal alien from Jordan." It rested on an Israeli military-court conviction from his teenage years in the occupied West Bank — Sarsour says he was interrogated and tortured over 80 days in Israeli custody, and that written charges were in Hebrew he could not read — and on an accusation that he "lied" on immigration forms. His attorneys note the U.S. government knew of the Israeli record when it admitted him in 1993 and at every step since; he has been pursuing citizenship since 1999. They say the government is also invoking the foreign-policy-threat ground, the same provision used against Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, and characterize the case as retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian rights — a claim that is theirs, but one the government's own choice of grounds does little to rebut.

The detention drew condemnation from Milwaukee's county executive and mayor, Rep. Gwen Moore, state legislators, CAIR, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Muslim and Christian clergy. Attorney Munjed Ahmad said the government "should not be doing the bidding of a foreign government"; the Muslim Legal Fund of America's immigration-litigation head said it was difficult to believe the government's position "is not rooted in a violation of his First Amendment right to speak about the suffering of Palestinians." An immigration hearing was set for April 18, and his attorneys filed a petition seeking his release.