ICE detains president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, lawyers say green card holder held as foreign policy threat

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained Salah Sarsour, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, after agents took him into custody outside his home on Monday, according to the Associated Press via The Guardian. Sarsour, 53, is a Palestinian-born US green card holder who has led what the mosque describes as Wisconsin’s largest Islamic organization for five years. His lawyers say he is being held on the claim that he poses a “foreign policy threat,” and they have filed a petition seeking his release.

The case sits at the intersection of immigration authority and domestic political policing, because the government does not need a criminal conviction to detain or remove a non-citizen. The legal tool is administrative: immigration custody, national-interest language, and a deportation process that runs on executive discretion. That is a different machine from the criminal courts, with fewer procedural tripwires and a lower burden for the state.

Sarsour’s attorneys argue he was targeted for criticizing Israel and for a conviction as a minor in Israeli military courts in the occupied West Bank, where he was born, The Guardian reported. His lawyer, Munjed Ahmad, said the alleged offenses included throwing rocks at Israeli officers and described the detention as an attempt to “stifle the discourse on the Palestinian narrative.” Sarsour has no US criminal record, his attorneys said; his wife and four adult children are US citizens.

Local officials have responded as if the detention is meant as a signal. Milwaukee’s mayor, Cavalier Johnson, called it “an outrage” and said there was “no substantive evidence he has done anything wrong,” according to The Guardian. The comparison being drawn by Sarsour’s lawyers—to the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University activist facing deportation on similar “foreign policy threat” grounds—suggests a repeatable template: pick a visible organizer, frame the issue as national interest rather than speech, and force the dispute into immigration court.

For community organizations that have long operated as intermediaries between government programs and immigrant populations, the message is practical. Leadership status does not insulate a green card holder from removal; it can make them easier to locate and more valuable as an example. Sarsour is being held at a county jail outside Indianapolis while the legal challenge proceeds.

ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment, The Guardian reported. The case will now turn on whether the government can keep “foreign policy threat” claims opaque enough to survive judicial review.