Salah Sarsour, the president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, was detained by federal immigration agents in Milwaukee on Monday, prompting calls for his release from elected officials and religious leaders who said his arrest was motivated by his political views. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surrounded Sarsour’s car as he left his home, taking him into custody after nearly a dozen agents arrived, according to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.
Sarsour’s attorneys said the government is holding him on the basis that he is a foreign policy threat, a rationale they said has “no merit.” At a news conference in Milwaukee on Thursday, supporters urged ICE to release him, with some attendees chanting for Sarsour’s freedom and recounting his background and work in the community.
Attorney Munjed Ahmad said Sarsour’s government should not be following Israel’s interests in the case. “Our government should not be doing the bidding of a foreign government,” Ahmad said, adding, “There’s no question in my mind is that this is to stifle the discourse on the Palestinian narrative.” Ahmad also said Sarsour wants to remain in the United States and is prepared to fight the detention.
The defense said Sarsour, 53, has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, arriving in 1993, and that he has no criminal record in the country. His attorneys said Sarsour has a green card and lives just outside Milwaukee, and they said his wife and four adult children are U.S. citizens.
Attorneys said they believe Sarsour was targeted for speaking out against Israel and for a conviction as a minor in Israeli military courts. Israel rejects allegations about the fairness of those proceedings, and Ahmad said the case involves alleged offenses that included throwing rocks at Israeli officers, according to the defense. Ahmad and other supporters pointed to scrutiny of those military courts, including allegations of limited due process and high conviction rates for Palestinians.
Several people speaking at the Thursday news conference linked Sarsour’s detention to broader patterns of immigration enforcement against political activists. Attorneys said they have likened the case to that of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student activist facing deportation after the federal government said he was a foreign policy threat.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said the detention is unwarranted and said federal authorities have not presented substantive evidence of wrongdoing. In a Thursday post on X, Johnson said, “He is a legal permanent resident. There is no substantive evidence he has done anything wrong,” and called the arrest “an outrage” that shows “overreach and harm from the U.S. immigration authorities.”
Religious leaders also spoke in support of Sarsour. The Rev. Paul D. Erickson, bishop of the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said, “This appears to be just the latest example of how this administration seeks to silence opposition and intimidate those who speak and act differently.”
Sarsour is being held in a county jail in Indiana, his attorneys said. They said they have filed a petition seeking his release, and they said an email message left Thursday for ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.
At the same news conference, one of Sarsour’s attorneys, Othman Atta, told supporters that the detention is connected to his views and his citizenship status. “He was targeted because of one thing, because he dared stand up to the Israeli army,” Atta said. “And he was not a U.S. citizen.”