Salah Sarsour, the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, has lost 30 pounds in the two months that he’s been in immigration detention, his attorneys say.
Sarsour’s federal case, in which advocates say the legal permanent resident is being targeted because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy, proceeded with a status hearing in district court Monday.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has accused Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, of lying on his immigration forms when he arrived from Ramallah three decades ago. He was arrested on March 30 and is being held in the Clay County Jail in Indiana.
Sarsour’s team has filed both a claim that Sarsour should be permanently freed, arguing that Sarsour’s overall detention is illegal, as well as a motion that he should be released sooner because of his deteriorating health. His lawyers also allege that his religious rights as a devout Muslim have been violated while in detention. In a letter filed to the court on May 29, Sarsour’s team said that Sarsour, who is diabetic, is not receiving regular blood sugar tests or medication. They also said that Sarsour’s ability to pray five times a day, in accordance with his faith, has been disturbed by guards.
“The continued detention of Mr. Sarsour—and his separation from his community and family—appears purely punitive; it continues to chill the speech of Mr. Sarsour and others seeking to speak out about Palestinian human rights,” the letter reads.
In a response, lawyers from the Department of Justice called those claims “unfounded.”
“(Sarsour’s) detention pending removal proceedings is entirely lawful and his belated conditions-based allegations do not support his request for release,” they wrote.
Attorneys reiterated these arguments on Monday before U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon, a nominee of President Donald Trump in the Southern District of Indiana.
Sarsour’s advocates said that he has not been provided with halal meals and that one diabetes-friendly snack he’d been offered was barbecue pork rinds, which many observant Muslims do not eat. Under those conditions, they said he had lost 30 pounds.
“Those are simply not adequate accommodations,” said one of his attorneys, Luna Droubi, on Monday.
Lawyers for the government refuted those claims. They said that Sarsour’s glucose had been checked daily for a week, until a doctor determined he only needed monthly checks. The attorney said that Sarsour’s glucose didn’t change in that time, that he is receiving daily diabetes medicine and a diabetes-responsive diet.
They also said that Sarsour was provided with an Arabic-language Quran by outside supporters and that his daily prayers are accommodated, but within “regular security measures within the jail.”
Judge Hanlon on Monday said he was “doing his best” to review those petitions quickly.
Salah Sarsour’s federal and immigration cases
Sarsour was arrested shortly after leaving his home in Franklin on March 30. In a statement, DHS called Sarsour a “terrorist” who had thrown Molotov cocktails at Israeli military members and lied about it on his green card application.
Sarsour’s supporters have said he was convicted of that as a teenager growing up in the West Bank, but dispute the details of the charges, which they argue were fabricated by the Israeli government.
Shortly after he was arrested, lawyers filed a writ of habeas corpus, which argues that Sarsour, a Palestinian native and activist for Palestinian rights, had been targeted on the basis of First Amendment-protected free speech while in the United States.
“It is definitely part of a pattern by this government of pursuing immigration cases against people whose advocacy, whose beliefs, whose activism this government doesn’t like,” said Samuel Cole, chief immigration litigation counsel with the ACLU of Illinois, which is supporting Sarsour’s case.
But in the meantime, Cole argued, Sarsour’s treatment in county jail justifies immediate release.
“There are some pretty extraordinary things going on here that would justify his release before the district judge even makes a decision on the habeas petition,” Cole said. “There’s no way to remedy the fact that he’s now been in jail since March 30, so it’s over two months.”
Sarsour’s lawyers first filed a motion for Sarsour to be released on bail in late April, citing the “extraordinary” nature of his detention, as well as his medical conditions.
“Respondents can point to no act—even a pretextual one—committed in the last 30 years which would warrant his sudden arrest and detention today,” they wrote. “Instead, Mr. Sarsour was whisked away from his wife, kids, grandkids, and mother on a Monday morning while on his way to work.”
In response, the government argued that Sarsour is “deportable for several reasons completely unrelated to his speech.”
Separately, Sarsour’s immigration case continues to unfold. The next hearing in those proceedings will be on June 24.
This story was originally published by WPR.
