Here to discuss the case is a member
of Sarsour's legal team, Sam
Cole, an attorney with the ACLU
of Illinois, who is also a former
immigration judge.
Sam, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
You're familiar with the arguments
raised by the Trump administration
against Salah Sarsouh.
The Secretary of State himself said
that he posed an adverse consequence
to foreign policy considerations.
Were there grounds to arrest and
detain him?
No, absolutely not.
Mr. Sarsour has been
a upstanding person
in the United States since he came
here over 30 years ago.
He is a grandfather of
nine U.S.
Citizen kids and
has had absolutely no trouble in the
U.N.
The only reason he was arrested was
because he's an outspoken
advocate for Palestinian
human rights.
And that's why he's been targeted by
this administration. And that is
absolutely not.
An appropriate and lawful reason
to arrest someone.
What were conditions like for Mr.
Sarsour in jail?
They were pretty bad.
He lost 30 pounds during
the time that he was there.
He also has a medical problem.
He's a type two diabetic, and his
doctor required
that he have daily glucose,
blood glucose monitoring, and
he was getting tested once a
month.
So that's not great, and that can
really pose some serious risks to
his health.
Was there a chance he could have
been deported?
So the case is ongoing, right?
So he has been released from
detention based on
our motion in front of
a federal district court judge.
So Mr. Sersour filed a petition for
a writ of habeas corpus asking
the federal judge to release him
from the immigration detention.
And the judge hasn't ruled
on that habeas petition
quite yet, but he did grant an
interim release of Mr. Sirsour.
While the court adjudicates
the habeas petition, saying
that he's made a strong showing that
he might prevail in the habeast
petition. But that doesn't mean the
immigration case is over.
So Mr. Sarsour is still fighting
deportation in
immigration court, and that's
ongoing.
You're a former immigration judge
yourself. You've said this case is
highly unusual.
You've never seen anything like it.
How much of the case is outside the
bounds of what you'd normally see?
I was an immigration judge in the
Chicago immigration court for
nine years, and I
handled actually a detained
docket, that's a docket of
individuals who are in immigration
custody.
So very similar to the situation
that Mr. Sarsour was in.
And Mr.Sarsour's case is in fact in
the chicago immigration court.
And I can tell you for one, I have
never seen anything like this
at all. The, first
of all, the primary
charge against them.
Is, as you noted, that letter
from Secretary of State
Marco Rubio saying
that Mr.
Sarsour's really lawful activity
in the United States poses a
foreign policy risk to the United
States. Now, that is
highly unusual and
highly legally dubious.
But the other thing that is
extraordinary about this case is,
although the case is
assigned to the Chicago immigration
court.
The judge that was assigned
to hear the case is not
a Chicago immigration court judge.
It's actually a very
senior level management judge
in the executive
office for immigration review.
It's an acting regional
deputy chief immigration judge.
It's essentially the second in
command of all the judges
in the entire immigration court
system. So that case was plucked
out of the Chicago immigration Court
judges and.
Specifically assigned to this one
management judge.
I've never seen that happen.
So I gather you feel like you have a
strong First Amendment case
here that his rights, your client's
rights, were violated.
Can you explain that?
Absolutely.
Mr. Sarsour,
as a longtime permanent resident of
the United States, has the same
First Amendment rights to speak
and to engage in
political activity and political
activism that essentially
you and I do as citizens of
the U.S.
And so what's really happening
is the government is
targeting him because they
don't like his speech.
And that is highly
problematic.
It violates
the Constitution,
the First Amendment, and
we're very concerned
to see these
charges against him by the
administration.
So you mentioned this, that this
case is not over.
You have hearings coming up.
How does this proceed?
What happens next?
So there's another
hearing coming up at the
end of July,
July 22nd, in
the immigration court,
where the government has
the burden of proof in this case.
They have to prove the
charges that
they have made against
them. And aside
from the charges based on
the Marco Rubio determination about
foreign policy There's some other
charges that relate to things that
happened decades and decades ago,
things the government has known
about for a very long time.
And, you know, we are,
we will fight these charges.
We are, he has very
good defenses and we are fighting
them in immigration court.
And if we lose immigration court,
we'll continue our fight all
the way up as far as it takes.
Because everyone knows what's going
on here. It's not about anything
that happened in decades ago.
It's about what he's doing now, his
speech. And that's why he's being
targeted.
All right, we'll be watching the
case. Sam Cole, thank you so much
for joining us.
Thank you.
Yes?
It's not surprising to me
that this case has gotten
international attention because
it is just part of a pattern by
the Trump administration to target
people they don't like, right?
They do what they can to
target individuals who are
saying things that they're
not happy with.
And so for Mr. Sarsour,
he's one of many Palestinian
rights activists who
have been targeted by this
administration.
Mr. Sarsour has gotten a tremendous
amount of support from his
community. He is really he is he is
a community leader He's the
president of his mosque, which
is the largest mosque in Wisconsin
He is beloved by
many many people whether they're
Muslim or Jews or Christians.
So he has a very
big support network because
of who he is and
Unfortunately, it doesn't
mean just because you have a large
support network doesn't mean that
this administration isn't going to
specifically go after you because
of your speech, and that's what's
happening.
Yeah, thank you.