An immigration judge ruled the Trump administration can deport Wisconsin’s largest mosque president on national security grounds, citing foreign-policy risks and decades-old convictions abroad.
A Chicago immigration judge held Wednesday that federal authorities may remove Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined his continued presence could carry serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.
Fox News reported that the ruling hands the Department of Homeland Security a major enforcement win in a case built on national security claims, prior overseas convictions, and long-running disputes over Sarsour’s record and advocacy.
Sarsour is a Jordanian national and, according to court documents, a lawful permanent resident who has lived in the United States for more than three decades. He leads what is described as Wisconsin’s largest mosque and is the father of six U.S. citizen children. DHS has labeled him a criminal illegal alien suspected of funding terror organizations and lying on immigration forms.
His lawyer rejects that framing and insists the government’s public-safety language collapses under the facts of a longtime resident with no U.S. criminal record.
In June 2025, Secretary Rubio invoked federal immigration law and found reasonable grounds to believe Sarsour’s presence would have adverse foreign policy consequences, and that he had engaged in terrorist activity or supported a terrorist organization. Government lawyers then pressed the case before an immigration judge on national security grounds.
Just The News reported that Judge Jayme Salinardi of the Chicago Immigration Court ruled Sarsour removable on those foreign-policy grounds. The same account notes he was imprisoned in Israel in 1988 after confessing to throwing a Molotov cocktail and stones, and was convicted in 1995 of attempting to possess weapons. The judge rejected the government’s separate claim that he lied on his green card application.
That sequence matters. The State Department determination came first. ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service later ran a targeted arrest operation in Milwaukee. Detention followed in an Indiana county jail. A mid-June 2026 photo captured Sarsour smiling shortly after release. The immigration judge’s ruling then sustained removability.
DHS tied the outcome directly to the administration’s enforcement line. A spokesperson said that under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, people who break the law face consequences, that criminal illegal aliens are not welcome, and that illegal aliens still receive due process.
The same hard line has defined other recent fights over who ICE prioritizes and how critics describe those arrests, including when DHS Secretary Mullin pushed back on claims that large shares of arrestees posed no public safety threat.
Government lawyers cited decades-old Israeli convictions: throwing rocks at Israeli military personnel and attempting to procure weapons. They also claimed a conviction for throwing a Molotov cocktail at IDF personnel. Sarsour’s lawyer, Patrick Taurel, said he was accused of the Molotov offense but never convicted. Sarsour has claimed he was tortured into a confession by Israeli authorities.
The Washington Examiner reported that Judge Salinardi ruled the 53-year-old can be removed on national security grounds tied to pro-Palestinian advocacy and those past convictions in Israel, under the provision Rubio invoked.
A 2001 FBI memorandum summarized allegations from Sarsour’s brother, Jamil, that Salah had helped raise money for the Holy Land Foundation on behalf of Hamas. The federal government later shuttered that foundation for terror ties. The memo is part of the government’s historical picture; the full assessment of those brother allegations is not laid out in the public accounts provided here.
Sarsour’s side calls the entire push political payback for Israel-Gaza advocacy. A Facebook post asking God to “give Gaza people victory” has been cited in coverage, and he acknowledged in a deposition that other language in the post could be read as asking God to punish those who wished harm on Gaza. He frames the case as a free-speech fight.
Taurel put the defense case in blunt terms to Fox News Digital.
Patrick Taurel, the lawyer representing Sarsour, said:
"If a lawful resident of the United States for over 30 years with zero arrests or convictions in this country, a family man and the father of 6 U.S. citizen kids, the elected president of his mosque, and an advocate for interfaith dialogue is a ‘public safety threat,’ as DHS claims, those words cease to have any meaning at all,"
That argument collides with the administration’s view that foreign convictions, terror-support allegations, and a formal State Department foreign-policy finding are exactly what the immigration statute is built to weigh. Similar clashes over how officials and critics talk about enforcement have played out when lawmakers minimized the threat profile of DHS arrestees even as ICE posted heavy monthly totals.
Reuters reported that Chicago Immigration Court Judge Jayme Salinardi found Sarsour poses a security and foreign policy threat under the Immigration and Nationality Act. ICE detained him in late March. He was released in mid-June after raising a free-speech retaliation claim. DHS welcomed the later ruling for sustaining multiple grounds of removability. Sarsour has no U.S. criminal record but carries a teenage Israeli military court conviction he disputes as coerced. He says deportation to the West Bank would endanger his life.
After the judge’s decision, Sarsour pledged to keep fighting.
Salah Sarsour said:
"I will continue fighting to defend the right to free speech and to stay in the country I have called home for more than three decades,"
Reuters also carried his separate line that he will not stop standing up for what he calls justice in Palestine. Just The News noted he told the Associated Press the ruling was “deeply disappointing” and that he intends to appeal.
The procedural path is now clear even if the appeals are not finished. Rubio’s determination supplied the foreign-policy hook. ICE and the Marshals made the arrest in Milwaukee. The immigration judge sustained removability. Sarsour remains free for now and says he will appeal. The dispute over the Molotov claim, government lawyers saying convicted, defense counsel saying accused only, stays unresolved in the public record cited here.
Enforcement conservatives have watched related ICE operations and messaging fights closely, from large targeted sweeps against illegal immigrants with serious records to pushback when the press softens the criminal profiles of those taken into custody.
The judge did not erase Sarsour’s permanent-resident paperwork with a single stroke. The order holds that the government may deport him on national security and foreign-policy grounds rooted in Rubio’s finding and the cited overseas record. DHS says the words mean what they say: break the law, face consequences, and do not expect the United States to host people it judges a foreign-policy or terror-support problem.
Sarsour’s camp answers that a mosque president, interfaith advocate, and father of six citizen children with no U.S. arrests is being punished for speech about Gaza. The government answers with Israeli convictions, a 2001 FBI memo summarizing Holy Land Foundation fundraising allegations on behalf of Hamas, a State Department determination, and an immigration judge who sustained removability anyway.
Those are not abstract theory fights. They are the concrete record the Trump administration put before the court, and the record the court accepted as enough to clear the path for removal. Critics who prefer to relabel enforcement targets as harmless will keep doing so, just as the White House has had to answer media “noncriminal” framing in other ICE cases by pointing back to actual conduct and charges.
National security immigration law exists for cases exactly like this one. When a Secretary of State flags foreign-policy harm and an immigration judge agrees the government may remove the man, the country is allowed to believe its own findings and act on them.
