For all the great and
wonderful work and commitment that
he has made. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Assalamu'alaikum.
It's truly, boy,
it's been one hell of a ride so
far. I'll tell you.
I'll say my legal career, I don't
think I've ever had this
difficult of an 81 days.
And I think the reason is
because I care so much about Salaam
al-Salaam as my brother.
Before, I'm his attorney, I am his
brother. I'm so honored,
very honored.
Very very honored to have
had the opportunity to be on
this amazing legal team for
somebody who's so amazing you
know I
Took issue with a little bit of what
he said earlier So I where
he said we're the heroes of all I
saw here later and for
anybody who knows you they know that
You're the hero because you are the
person
And what I love about Salah Sarsour
is,
for those of you who heard the
sermon today,
our dear Shia Rami
talked about being
with God and doing
what pleases God no matter
what the cost, because you know
you're pleasing a higher power.
That epitomizes what
Salah sarsour.
And so I think for those who don't
know Salah, for those who are.
Commenting online about
whether good or bad about Salah.
Many people had negative things to
say about somebody they've never met
before.
Without knowing the person of Salah,
know that he is somebody who stands
in the path of God and does
things to please the Almighty
in order to better himself,
his family, and society at large.
So those who want to
comment know that that's the person
that you're commenting about.
I will, by the
way, this was on the scripted part.
Now I'm gonna get to the script
part. So the scripting part is,
our dear Congresswoman Gwen Moore,
as Brother Othman has indicated, she
went at least twice to
see Salah to ensure that he was
being taken care of to look
after his health.
We'll talk about that in just a few
moments.
And she also spent some
time writing to the jail
writing to DHS to
get them to treat Salah better.
Her statement reads as follows,
I'm so overjoyed that Salah is home.
So many in our community had his
back and were supporting him.
From the beginning, I knew that
Salat was being targeted by the
Trump administration for his
advocacy for Palestinians.
In America, this is not a
crime. It's a right entitled
to individuals no matter who
holds the White House.
The judge's ruling reaffirms
this. To Salah,
I say welcome home.
I wish I was there to give you a big
hug but I'm there in spirit
sending lots of love and
that is again from our Congresswoman
Gwen Moore.
While in custody,
as we indicated in
our legal filings, Salah
had not received,
in my opinion, in the legal team's
opinion, and more importantly in his
medical team's opinions, he had
not been receiving treatment
that was necessary
in order to make sure that he didn't
get or something, God
forbid, worse will happen.
As Luna kind of alluded to,
his physician has always indicated
very clearly, unequivocally,
that he needs his blood sugar tested
at least daily.
That was refused.
His physician indicated that he
needed to take certain medicines.
Now, they did give him some
medicine, metformin, but other
medications were ignored.
He has ulcers until now
on his feet that went untreated,
despite his request for them to be
treated.
Incidentally, I will note,
the day of his release,
they finally decided to give him a
band-aid and put that on
top of the ulcer, instead of
actually treating him when he
requested the treatment.
Salah didn't lose 30 pounds just for
the record, he lost 35.
How do we know this? Because we sent
him to the doctor today to get
checked up.
35 pounds and six
inches of his waistline.
I want you to let that sit in for
just a second.
In eight days,
he loss 35 pounds
and he lost six
inches on his waist line.
I spoke to his physician today and
I asked him how his health was.
And his position was very
unequivocal. He said, you know, I'm
worried about the
amount of weight he lost so
rapidly that concerns
me quite a bit.
I'm concerned about the fact that he
has these ulcers that went
untreated.
And frankly, had it not been for
his faith, his
resolve,
his resilience, his strength,
I think something really bad would
have happened to him.
His physician is shocked
that he didn't come
out worse for work.
And I want the media
particularly to let that
be known.
And it's not just about Salah.
We have Salah back.
Thank you.
But there are other people
languishing in Clay County and
in ICE custody who are being
mistreated, who are disallowed
their proper medical care.
The fact that it was only about 50
degrees in his cell,
and they gave him a thin blanket and
told him make do with it.
Should tell you all you need to know
about
ICE's intentions.
I don't blame necessarily only Clay
County Jail, because the
directions were not coming from Clay
County, the directions are coming
from ICE.
Let's be clear about that.
We could get a doctor, please.
A doctor, would you?
I'm sorry.
You can see the
toll that this is taking on his
family.
This is his son who passed out just
a moment ago.
And I'll tell you, they haven't
slept, they haven't ate,
they hadn't drank properly.
And this is the result of what
happens when your father's gone for
81 days.
I think he'll be OK.
He may be dehydrated.
But he hasn't slept, as
Allah is indicating.
He has not slept because
he's been anguishing
over missing his father.
And again, this is the result of
what happens when people are
taken in a manner that
is unjust.
The good thing about ISM is we don't
block for doctors.
We have a lot of doctors.
We're nice.
Yeah.
His son, Muhammad, who was the one
that passed out, I
will just tell you,
I said this to actually
my wife, maybe a month or
so ago, that I was worried about him
particularly because he wasn't
showing any emotion about anything.
He was cooping it up inside and
I could tell he was cooped it up.
And I think what happened
today is that he, yesterday,
had a wave of emotion.
And that's kind of the result of
that.
Salah was not given his medical
attention, and I was saying that
Salah is not the only one we should
be worried about here.
That ICE is doing this to everyone.
We have in Clay County over
200 plus
ICE detainees
abductees that are
being treated immensely
poorly when it comes to medical
care.
And it's high time for our
administration
to realize what they're doing is
un-American.
To abduct somebody because
of his speech, his advocate
for his advocacy for
Palestine is totally un-America.
And we saw that
this judge in the federal court,
Judge Harlan,
for those of you who didn't read
the decision, it's a 29-page
decision, his
decision was very,
very strong.
He made it very clear that
he felt that the reason that
Salah was abducted
was pretextual.
In other words, that the reasons he
was abducting was because of
his speech.
He made very clear, that
he thought there was a substantial,
and his words, not mine, substantial
evidence, that there was substantial
evidence that
the only reason Salat was abducted
by ICE 35 years or so
after having a green card,
after multiple interviews with
immigration over decades,
was only because of his advocacy for
Palestine.
He made it clear in his
decision That's all.
In recent history,
there are only four people
in which the
Secretary of State used the
determination of adverse foreign
policy, and all
four people were advocates for
Palestine.
Judge's decision was extremely
was a breath of fresh air,
was a decision that led me,
at least, to say,
you know, maybe our system of
checks and balances is working,
maybe our constitution is not
going to be gutted, maybe there
are
people in the judiciary who
are strong enough to stand up
against the Trump administration for
what's right, to stand up to uphold
our constitution and our freedoms,
And I think Judge Harden was one
of them.
All of this effort could not have
gone without the
help of an enormous amount
of people.
Salah thanked the community, I also
will thank the community.
This community, and I don't
mean Milwaukee alone, but of course
Milwaukee has a big hand in it.
From coast to coast,
we were getting letters and
declarations from people
when we weren't even asking for
them. We ended up with about
300 declarations from people
nationwide, which we sent
to the judge.
And those people need to be thanked,
so all of you, for your
declarations, for your statements on
behalf of Slausa.
So thank you very much.
The community organizations
throughout the nation, some
here and some all over
the United States, need to be
thanked. They organized,
they became activists.
Some people who have never been
activists before all of a sudden
became activists We
have a robust team, a
legal team.
We have robust social media team.
We have the robust working group
team. I won't even try to
name all of them.
There are dozens of people, and I
know I'll forget some.
The legal team, I will
just say some of the
lead attorneys on each legal team
and their law firms,
but just know not one
legal team or not one law firm
only put one attorney on
his case.
Most of our law firms have
multiple people working on Slaw's
case, and I think that's important
to know.
Luna Drummey,
I would like to thank her and her
team, Bell, Dr. Levine,
and Hoffman.
Patrick Terrell and his team
at Grossman Young Hammond, they're
taking the lead on the immigration
side.
Mark Vanderhout and his Team of
Vanderhoud LLP,
they are also helping on both the
federal side and the immigration
side.
Samuel Hoel from
the ACLU and the ACL U team.
Kate Brady, the Muslim
Legal Fund and her team,
and Hassan Ahmed from Virginia,
who is the
law firm of Hassan Ahmad.
Those are just some of the attorneys
on the case.
I also would echo Salah and thanking
Abman Abba for his immense
assistance.
And I will just say one more time,
it is truly, truly my
honor to be part of this legal
team. I get to work with some of
greatest minds in law,
both on the federal side and
immigration side.
I've learned so much from all of
them.
And more, or as importantly,
I get to work for somebody who
deserves it and is lost or sued.
I get work for someone who I truly
believe in.
I get the work for who's my best
friend, who's brother, who I love
dearly. Thank you.
Okay, I want to just end by
thanking the media.
Okay, this is not part, it
wasn't part of the plan, but I'll
tell you.
Without being able
to get information to
the public, without
challenging the
government narratives.
I do believe that
the press is
the fourth branch of government
because it keeps the government
clean when the government is
trying to do things
based on false information
or misleading information or
they're not giving people all of
the proper information,
where they take an individual who's
been here for 30-some years without
any criminal record,
conviction, charge ever
in the United States, and
they're using what has happened
in a country that is committing
ethnic cleansing and genocide,
and yet they try to defame
the loss of suit in his community.
It is the press that will keep
the government in check.
We have a system of checks and
balances, and we need
the press to constantly
ask questions particularly
of those in authority,
particularly of the
government.
And we thank you, and you
deserve a hand for all
the work that you do.
I want to thank you for coming and
reporting on this.
I want thank all of the community
members for being here as well.
This is just the beginning because
as Attorney Druby mentioned,
you know, he was released on
a bomb, but the
habeas case is still moving
forward.
He also has an immigration case,
which is immigration is very
politicized.
Immigration judges are part of the
Department of Justice, not part
of our judicial system.
Those immigration
judges that have called for the
release of Mohsen Mehdiyawi
and Romaisa Ozturk,
the woman, the Turkish woman who
only wrote an editorial in
support of the people of Gaza,
and that got her detained
and they tried to deport her,
the judges that decided
to release them, the immigration
judges, were fired after
they made their decision because the
Department of Justice is
the one that's in control.
It's not part of the judicial
system.
Judge Hamlin is part of the federal
court system, and even though
he was appointed by
President Trump,
he made his ruling based
on the law, based on our
First Amendment rights, based on
constitutional principles, and that
is what makes this country great.
It is those individuals who,
despite the party that they belong
to, or what background they are,
they're willing to rule
based on the rule of
law based on just principles,
and not based on politics.
Again, thank you all very much.
Don't know what you think.
Thank you.
I love you, I can't do it, or I
wouldn't be here if I were you, but
I would like to get started with it.
I'd like to see you again.