Salah Sarsour, a legal permanent resident who has lived in the United States for more than three decades, was arrested by plainclothes officers from at least 10 unmarked vehicles on March 30 and held in ICE custody in the Clay County jail in Indiana. He was released Thursday on his own recognizance — meaning he does not have to pay a cash bond — and must remain in Wisconsin.
Hanlon’s order found that homeland security officials and Rubio “probably trampled on” Sarsour’s First Amendment right to free speech and appeared to have arrested him in retaliation for his Palestinian rights advocacy. The order cited reporting from the New York Times and the Heritage Foundation’s website, which, Hanlon wrote, presented the White House with the idea to target prominent foreign-born Muslim and Palestinian rights leaders as terrorists for deportation or prosecution.
“Salah Sarsour, who has lived in this country for more than three decades and served as a core pillar in his community without any issues, should never have been detained in the first place,” his legal team said in a statement after his release. “While we continue to fight these baseless claims in court, today is about celebrating a family being reunited. It is also a sober reminder that, if the government can target Mr. Sarsour, everyone’s free speech rights are at risk.”
Sarsour, who describes himself as a stateless Palestinian, gained public attention as a board member of American Muslims for Palestine, an advocacy group championing Palestinian rights. ICE considers him a Jordanian citizen. He became a legal permanent resident in 1998, and immigration officials approved his citizenship application decades ago, though he did not naturalize.
Rubio personally signed a memo to the Department of Homeland Security last year describing Sarsour as deportable, accusing his group of being “found to have been involved in activities providing funds to Hamas.” Hanlon’s order noted that the federal government, through its lawyers, argued for Sarsour’s deportation based on two convictions from more than three decades ago in Israel — one for throwing a molotov cocktail and the other for attempting to store weapons and ammunition. Sarsour denies having committed those crimes, and Hanlon viewed them as a non-issue for justifying his incarceration, noting that the government had known about them since the 1990s.
Sarsour lost 30 pounds while in detention, the order said, and his lawyers told the court he was “at constant risk of developing serious complications from diabetes given that the medical staff only checks his blood-sugar levels once a month.” The judge ordered Sarsour’s release on personal recognizance rather than requiring a $25,000 bond, an ankle monitor, and routine check-ins with ICE.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security described Sarsour as a “terrorist,” citing the convictions from his youth in Israel. Sarsour’s legal team continues to fight the government’s claims in court.