for all the great and wonderful work and commitment
that is made.
Good afternoon.
It's been one hell of a drive, so far, I'll tell you.
I'll say in my lingo career, I don't think I've ever had this
difficult of 81 days, and I think the reason is because I
care so much about the loss of Suez, as my brother,
before I'm his attorney on 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.
I took issue with a little bit of what he said earlier,
so I, where he said, we're the heroes.
Well, life's about your living room.
And for anybody who knows who, they know that you're the hero,
because you are the person that speaks to the father.
And what I love about Suez, as soon as, you know,
for those of you who have heard the sermon today,
the, our dear ship, what I mean, 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's the loss of Suez.
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 is on the scripted part,
now maybe on the scripted part.
So the scripted part is, our dear congresswoman,
one more, as Brother Uthman has indicated,
she went at least twice to cease the law
to ensure that he was being taken care of,
to go, of course, to look after his help.
We'll talk about that in just a few moments.
And she also spent some time writing to the jail
and 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 Salah 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 am there in spirit sending lots of love.
And that is, again, from our congresswoman, Gwen Moore.
APPLAUSE
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 opinion,
he had not been receiving treatment
that was necessary in order to make sure
that he didn't get ill or something
that could have been worse or better.
As Luna kind of alluded to, his position has always
indicated very clearly, unequivocally,
that he needs his blood sugar tested at least daily.
That was refused.
His position indicated that he needed
to take certain medicines.
Now they didn't give him some medicine in that format,
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 that day of his release,
they finally decided to give him a mandate on the end,
and put that on top of the ulcer,
instead of actually treating him
when he requested the treatment.
So I didn't lose 30 months, just for the remedy,
round 35, how do we know this?
Because at least sent him to the doctor today to get checked out.
35 pounds and six inches of his waistline.
I want you to let that sit in for just a second.
In 80 days, he lost 35 pounds
and he lost six inches of his waistline.
I spoke to his position today,
and I asked him how his health was.
And his position was very uncomfortable.
He said, you know, when did I worry
about the amount of weight he lost so rapidly
that concerns me quite a bit.
I'm worried about the fact that he had these ulcers
that went untreated.
And frankly, had it not been for his faith,
his needs a lot of faith, his resolve,
his resilience, his strength,
I think something really bad would have happened to him.
His position is shocked
that he didn't come out first for it.
And I want the media, particularly,
to let that be known.
And it's not just about Salah.
We have Salah bad, thank you.
But there are other people languishing in play county
and in ice custody who are being mistreated,
who are being disallowed
or 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 to make do with him,
should tell you all you need to do about that,
not to tell you all you need to know about ice's intentions.
I don't blame necessarily only play county jail
because the directions were not coming from play county.
The directions were coming from ice.
Let's be clear about that.
We could get a doctor, please.
A doctor, please.
Can you call the doctor.
You can see the toll that this is taking on its family.
This is his son who passed out just a moment ago.
And I'll tell you, that you haven't slept.
They have an age, they haven't ranked properly, and this is the result of what happens when your father's gone for 81 days.
I think he'll be okay, he may be dehydrated.
But he hasn't slept, as a lot 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 the ISM is we don't block the doctors, we have a lot of people.
Yeah, his son, Malcolm, 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 him in the US who picked it up inside, and I could tell he was scooping it up inside.
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 who should be worried about you.
That ICE is doing this to everyone.
We have in Clay County over 200 plus ICE detainees of the D's that are being treated immensely poorly when it comes to medical care.
At a high time for our administration to realize what they're doing in front of America, to abduct somebody because of his speech, his advocacy for Palestine is totally un-American.
And we saw that this judge in the federal part of Harvard, 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 protection.
In other words, that the reason he was abducted was because of his speech.
He made it very clear that he felt there was a substantial, and in his words, not mine, substantial evidence that there was substantial evidence that the only reason Salah was abducted by ICE 35 years or so after having a green heart,
after multiple interviews with immigration over the decades, was only because of an advocacy for Palestine.
He made it clear in his decision that in recent history, there are only four people in which the Secretary of State views the determination of adverse foreign policy and all four people were advocates for Palestine.
Judge's decision was extremely, was a breath of pressure, 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 good.
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 hold our Constitution and our freedoms, and I think Judge Hardlin 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 thanked the community. This community, and I don't mean Milwaukee alone, but of course, Milwaukee had 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 in that nation life 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 Salah.
The community organizations throughout the nation, those 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 a robust social media team. We have a 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 legal 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 the law's case, and I think that's important to know.
Luna Drowmy, who heard from her, I would like to thank her and her team, Bell Dr. Levine and Hoffman, Patrick Terrell, and his team at Grossman Young-Hammond.
They are taking the lead on the immigration side. Mark Vanderheel and his team of Vanderheel L.O.P.
They are also helping on both the federal side and the immigration side.
Samuel Holt, from the ACLU and the ACLU team.
Kate Brady, who is the Muslim legal fund and her team, and has an admin from Virginia, who is the law firm and has an admin.
Those are just some of the attorneys on the case. I also would echo a lot of thinking of Madhava 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 the 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 with somebody who deserves it. It's the law so soon.
I get to work with somebody who I truly believe in.
I get to work with somebody who is my best friend, who is my brother, who I love dearly. Thank you.
I wanted to stand by thanking the media.
This is not part of the title.
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 37 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 debate the loss of fluid in this 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, again, for all of these.
I want to thank you for coming and reporting on this.
I want to thank all of the community members for being here as well.
This is just the beginning, because, as Attorney Drew B. Benson, you know, he was released on a bomb, but to the previous case is still moving forward.
We also have an immigration case, which is immigration is a very good aside.
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 Boston, that, that, that we, and Ramisa, those two, the woman, the Turkish woman who only wrote an editorial in support of the people on the bus set, and that got her detained, and they tried to deport her.
The judges that decided to release 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 this 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.
Thank you very much.
Hello.
You're welcome for me.
Thank you.
I can't do it.
Hi.