Immigration judge rules US can deport activist and community leader Salah Sarsour

An immigration judge ruled that the US government can deport Palestinian American Salah Sarsour, who is the president of Wisconsin's largest mosque and a US permanent resident, under a Cold War-era law.

Sarsour, who grew up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was taken by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in late March and released in mid-June after a federal judge said he had raised a substantial free speech retaliation claim that would render his detention unlawful.

Chicago Immigration Court Judge Jayme Salinardi sided late on Tuesday with the government's argument that Sarsour posed a security and foreign policy threat under the Cold War-era Immigration and Nationality Act, while rejecting the government's allegation that he lied on his green card application.

The US Department of Homeland Security welcomed the ruling, saying the judge "sustained multiple grounds of removability" in the case.

Sarsour said his legal team will appeal the ruling, which he called "deeply disappointing."

"I will not stop standing up for what's right and for justice in Palestine," he said in a statement. Sarsour cannot be deported until all legal avenues available to him are exhausted. He says his life will be at risk if deported to the occupied West Bank.

Islamic Society of ​Milwaukee, Wisconsin's ​largest mosque, says Sarsour has lived ⁠in the US for over three decades.

The mosque ​has said Sarsour was "being targeted on the basis of his Palestinian and Muslim background, and his advocacy ​for Palestinian rights."

He has type 2 diabetes and lost more than 30 pounds in ICE detention, his legal team said.

Sarsour has no criminal record in the US and was convicted as ​a teenager in Israeli military court before he came to the United States, which the Trump administration noted to cast him as a threat. Sarsour says the government has known that information for decades.

Israeli rights group B'Tselem says military courts in ‌the occupied West ⁠Bank, where Palestinians are tried for alleged crimes, have a 96% conviction rate and a history of extracting confessions through torture.

Sarsour denies committing ​crimes and says he was tortured and coerced into past confessions.

"This immigration proceeding has made it clear that I am being unfairly targeted by this administration for my advocacy on Palestinian human rights," he said in a public statement last month about the situation..

"I put my trust in God and my legal team to navigate this attack on me and the life I have built in America, and that I can continue to be with my family in Wisconsin as I have for the past three decades," he added.

Trump has attempted to deport foreign pro-Palestinian protesters, threatened funding freezes for universities where protests were held, enforced a social media screening of immigrants and sanctioned critics of Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people.