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In his first public remarks after being released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, Palestinian American Salah Sarsour, a U.S. permanent resident who has lived in this country for more than three decades, made no mention of the thirty pounds he had lost during his eighty-day detention, and only a passing reference to how cold his cell at the Dale County, Indiana, facility was. What he remembered most was the mail.<\/p>\n
\u201cI brought back with me more than 400 letters,\u201d he\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0community members and reporters at a June 19 press conference at the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. These came from supporters in multiple states around the country and helped Sarsour, who was released by a Trump-appointed district judge on June 18, maintain hope during his time in custody.<\/p>\n A few days earlier more than 150 Jewish, Muslim, and Christian allies\u00a0had gathered to protest<\/a>\u00a0outside the Indiana facility where Sarsour was being held.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the two months since Salah Sarsour was taken from his beloved community here, thousands of Jewish Americans have risen up to oppose the state terror done in our name against Salah and other Palestinians,\u201d Jodi Melamed, one of the lead organizers of a group called Jews for Salah,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0reporters about the June 14 protest and the Jewish community\u2019s broader solidarity effort. \u201cWe know that Jewish safety depends on protecting a free multicultural, multiracial democracy and that when ICE comes for one, they come for us all.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite his ordeal, Sarsour was optimistic about his case. He\u00a0thanked<\/a>\u00a0Judge James Patrick Hanlon of the Southern District of Indiana for his \u201cfairness,\u201d adding that, \u201chonestly, he gives me hope for the system.\u201d<\/p>\n In his twenty-nine-page order to release Sarsour, Hanlon\u00a0cited<\/a> the Milwaukee resident\u2019s \u201cdecades of living a law-abiding life in the United States.\u201d The judge said the green card holder, who emigrated from the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 1993, has a \u201csubstantial\u201d claim that the federal government violated his Constitutional rights. \u201cMr. Sarsour\u2019s speech in support of Palestinian rights is protected by the First Amendment,\u201d Hanlon wrote.<\/p>\n The Trump Administration contends that First Amendment rights do not extend to noncitizens, a claim the judge\u2019s order rejects. Sarsour was represented by the New York law firm\u00a0Beldock Levine & Hoffman<\/a>\u00a0and the ACLU of Illinois, the latter of which released a statement upon Sarsour\u2019s release.<\/p>\n \u201cIn issuing this order, the federal judge made clear that the government cannot detain a lawful permanent resident for speaking out about Palestinian human rights,\u201d\u00a0the\u00a0statement\u00a0read<\/a>. The case, it continued, holds \u201ceveryone\u2019s free speech rights\u201d in the balance.<\/p>\n The fifty-three-year-old Sarsour is not the first lawful U.S. resident of Palestinian origin to be detained by ICE for allegedly\u00a0endangering<\/a>\u00a0U.S. foreign policy interests. But his case stands out because of his long presence in the country. The other prominent cases, those of Palestinians\u00a0Mahmoud Khalil<\/a> and Mohsen Mahdawi<\/a>, involve younger men who entered the United States more recently to attend college.<\/p>\n Unlike Khalil, who was moved during his detention to a facility in Louisiana, Sarsour was\u00a0not transfered<\/a>\u00a0from Indiana to a third state, where judges might have been more receptive to the Trump Administration\u2019s campaign\u00a0to strip<\/a>\u00a0legal permanent residents of their green cards for \u201cnational security reasons<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The government had asked that Sarsour be released only on cash bail and that he be fitted with an ankle monitor\u2014requests that Hanlon, who determined that Sarsour did not represent a flight risk, denied. \u201cSarsour has no history of non-compliance and is well established in the Milwaukee community,\u201d\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0Hanlon.<\/p>\n As Sarsour continues to fight the immigration case brought against him by federal authorities, his attorneys are pursuing a case arguing that the government\u2019s actions violated his Constitutional rights. Luna Droubi, one of the attorneys representing Sarsour,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0attendees at the June 19 press conference that his detention in the United States was \u201cpunitive,\u201d and \u201cin retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of his people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is about Palestine, but it can affect any other area [of advocacy],\u201d Droubi said.<\/p>\n In the immigration case against him, the Department of Homeland Security\u00a0alleges<\/a>\u00a0that Sarsour lied on his green card application by neglecting to mention that he had been\u00a0convicted<\/a>\u00a0by the Israeli military in 1989 for allegedly throwing stones and a Molotov cocktail at soldiers. Sarsour, who resided in the Israeli-occupied West Bank at the time, has always denied these charges.<\/p>\n Hanlon noted that the Israeli allegations against Sarsour were known to the U.S. government and that immigration officials had more than thirty years to act on them but did not. In the meantime, Hanlon added, Sarsour established a life in America and has never fallen afoul of the law in this country.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories\u00a0is illegal<\/a>\u00a0under international law. Using a procedure known as \u201cadministrative detention<\/a>,\u201d the Israeli military routinely holds Palestinians in the Occupied Territories without charge, or based on allegations that rely solely on soldiers\u2019 testimony. Palestinians can be held for up to six months at a time, with sentences renewable indefinitely.<\/p>\n Israeli human rights organizations have\u00a0documented<\/a>\u00a0widespread abuse, including torture and sexual violence, in detention facilities. Children, some as young as fourteen, have been detained and\u00a0denied<\/a>\u00a0access to their parents during interrogations, according to B\u2019Tselem, a leading Israeli watchdog organization.<\/p>\n Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, the number of Palestinian prisoners from the occupied territories has skyrocketed, with B\u2019Tselem\u00a0documenting<\/a>\u00a0a more than 100 percent increase. Israel\u2019s war on Gaza since then has met the definition of a\u00a0genocide<\/a>, according to leading scholars<\/a> and the Lemkin Institute<\/a>, named after the Jewish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin, who\u00a0first coined<\/a>\u00a0the term.<\/p>\n Combined, Israel\u2019s earlier assaults on Gaza\u2014including in 2008 to 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021\u2014killed thousands of Palestinians, destroyed large swaths of the territory, and displaced hundreds of thousands from their homes, including those living in refugee camps.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s attacks in Gaza have slowed since October 2025, when the United States\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0what it called a ceasefire. The term is misleading at best, however, as more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed since the announcement, with a further 3,000 injured,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the group Medical Aid for Palestinians, which cites figures from the Ministry of Health in Gaza.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank\u00a0continue<\/a>, with Israeli soldiers reoccupying parts of the territory and\u00a0displacing<\/a>\u00a0tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. The campaign has\u00a0included<\/a>\u00a0violent attacks by Jewish settlers, who are often protected by Israeli soldiers. A recent\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0column\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0on multiple instances of sexual violence, including rape, against Palestinian detainees\u2014cases that have been\u00a0documented<\/a>\u00a0by Israeli organizations such as the Public Committee Against Torture.<\/p>\n A majority of Democrats in the United States\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0ending military aid to Israel, while recent polls show that a majority of voters under fifty years old from both parties\u00a0view<\/a>\u00a0Israel unfavorably. That shift is beginning to register at the polls, too, with Dr. Adam Hamawy, an Egyptian American surgeon, Army veteran, and outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights\u2014he volunteered to treat the injured in Gaza\u2014winning<\/a>\u00a0the June 2 Democratic primary for New Jersey\u2019s Twelfth Congressional District seat. After this November\u2019s election, Hamawy is all but guaranteed to serve in Congress for the reliably blue district.<\/p>\n