Wisconsin mosque leader describes 80 days in ICE detention

MILWAUKEE (MNTV) — Salah Sarsour, president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, says the more than 80 days he spent in ICE custody brought back memories of being jailed decades ago by Israeli military authorities in the West Bank, describing his treatment in American immigration detention as humiliating and dehumanizing.

Sarsour, born in the West Bank and a US permanent resident for nearly 30 years, was detained in March and released after a federal judge found his detention was likely connected to his advocacy for Palestinian rights — retaliation that, if proven, could render the detention unlawful.

The Trump administration is still trying to deport him.

The Department of Homeland Security accuses him of supporting extremist organizations and giving false information on immigration documents, allegations he denies. The agency also cites decades-old convictions from an Israeli military court, which Sarsour says stemmed from accusations dating to his teenage years during the first intifada.

He has no criminal record in the United States, and says previous US reviews of his immigration status were aware of that history.

He was arrested while traveling in Wisconsin and moved between facilities in Illinois and Indiana, where he says he received inadequate medical care for his diabetes, had limited access to religious practice, and lost significant weight.

His attorneys say the government accelerated his immigration proceedings to make an example of him.

That is the crux of the case, and a federal judge has already found the argument credible enough to order his release: a legal permanent resident of three decades, with six US citizen children and nine grandchildren, businesses in Milwaukee since 1993, and no American criminal record — detained, his lawyers argue, for what he said about Gaza. Sarsour says he intends to keep advocating regardless.