Judge rules leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque can be deported

An immigration judge has ruled that the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque can be deported, his legal team announced Wednesday.

Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, was arrested by immigration agents on March 30. He was held in the Clay County, Indiana, jail for more than 80 days.

In June, U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon ordered her release while her case progresses. Hearings in his deportation case began in July before Deputy Chief Immigration Judge Jayme Salinardi.

On Wednesday morning, a statement from Sarsour’s legal team said Salinardi had ruled that Sarsour was “deportable.” Patrick Taurel, Sarsour’s lead immigration lawyer, said they would appeal Tuesday’s ruling.

“The evidence presented at trial compels only one conclusion: that Salah is not deportable for any of the reasons alleged by ICE and that Salah should be able to keep his green card,” Taurel wrote in a statement.

Sarsour, in a statement, called the decision “deeply disappointing.”

“While today’s decision is deeply disappointing, I will not give up,” Sarsour wrote. “I will continue to fight to defend the right to free speech and to remain in the country I have called home for more than three decades. »

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security accused Sarsour of lying on his immigration forms in order to obtain his green card. A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security called him “a terrorist convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli armed forces.”

But his legal team and supporters say he was arrested because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy. At his first deportation hearing in July, his legal team argued that the federal government had known about his conviction for years and that he was now being targeted because of his pro-Palestinian activism.

At a news conference Wednesday morning, Taurel said Salinardi set a 60-day deadline to request an eviction waiver. He said they would most likely file an “application for a stay of deportation under the convention against torture.”

“It’s basically an application, like asylum, where you’re trying to show that it’s more likely than not that you’ll be tortured if you’re sent to the country the government is proposing to send you to,” Taurel said.

Taurel said there would be a trial on the matter, probably early next year.

“We will appeal the judge’s decision and we hope to be vindicated on appeal,” Taurel said.

The judge’s decision comes after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memorandum in 2025 that Sarsour was deportable under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“The immigration judge (Salinardi) gave extreme deference to Secretary of State Rubio’s ruling that Salah was deportable under this provision,” Taurel said.

“The judge (Salinardi) said he could not look past Rubio’s findings and was bound by the decisions of the higher courts,” he added.

During a brief status conference hearing Wednesday morning, Salinardi said he was retiring and that another immigration judge would set the date for the next hearing in the case.

Sarsour, who grew up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has lived in the United States for more than 30 years. He is also a board member of American Muslims for Palestine.