Doxxed by Canary Mission and jailed by ICE, Salah Sarsour calls on his Wisconsin community to challenge injustice.
By Mike Ludwig ,
April 21, 2026
Federal immigration agents transported Salah Sarsour hundreds of miles away from his family to a county jail in Indiana that contracts with ICE, where Sarsour remains incarcerated today as attorneys petition for his release.
Free Salah Sarsour / freesalah.org
Nearly a dozen agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surrounded Muslim community leader Salah Sarsour on March 30 after he left his home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and serving as president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, the city’s largest mosque and Muslim institution, Sarsour is a husband, father, and grandfather described as a pillar of his community and a “loving bear” who is “always smiling.”
ICE’s parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claimed without evidence that Sarsour is a “terrorist” who “lied” on a green card application when he moved to the U.S. in the 1990s. However, Sarsour’s attorney says that federal documents show he was jailed because Secretary of State Marco Rubio considered him a threat to U.S. foreign policy in June 2025, which was also reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Sarsour’s arrest came shortly after he was profiled by the shady pro-Israel website Canary Mission known for doxxing and smearing the reputations of Palestinian rights activists on college campuses. Their targets included Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was abducted and jailed by ICE for more than three months in 2025.
Federal immigration agents transported Sarsour hundreds of miles away from his family to a county jail in Indiana that contracts with ICE, where he remains incarcerated today as attorneys petition for his release. On April 6, a few days after his arrest, Sarsour released a letter to his community, urging fellow Muslims and civil rights activists in Milwaukee to continue “standing on just causes without hesitation.”
Citing lessons learned while he was jailed by the Israeli military as a teenager living in the West Bank, Sarsour’s letter frames the latest “unjust confinement” as a test of faith. Sarsour references the story of the prophet Yusuf — or Joseph in Christian and Hebrew texts — who was imprisoned in Egypt on false charges but maintained his faith in God and justice.
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“The prophets never stood with injustice, with oppressors and with other evildoers; rather, they taught us to stand with the mathloomeen (the oppressed) and defend them,” Sarsour wrote. “This is why our community has always put forth tremendous efforts to help others, including standing with the people of Gaza, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Kashmir, Burma, Lebanon, and beyond.”
The letter is reminiscent of the one issued by Martin Luther King Jr. after he was jailed for violating an anti-protest injunction in Birmingham, Alabama. On scraps of paper, King penned a letter from his jail cell to his followers, criticizing “white moderates” who said that civil rights protests were disruptive and untimely. Touting the moral power of nonviolent civil disobedience, King famously declared that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Sarsour’s colleagues and supporters say he was targeted and locked up over his free speech about Palestinian rights and against Israel’s genocidal wars. On April 20, a coalition of Muslim civil rights groups gathered on Capitol Hill to demand Sarsour’s release. Osama Abu Irshaid, executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, warned that the Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestine voices as “threats to foreign policy” undermines freedom of speech for everyone.
“If [Muslims] can be targeted because of their political speech, anyone could be the subject tomorrow,” Abu Irshaid said during a press conference.
Abu Irshaid said the First Amendment does not align with the actions of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who personally signed off on arrests of pro-Palestine student activists after designating their speech as a foreign policy threat in an attempt to revoke their visas and green cards. During the anti-genocide protests that swept campuses in 2024, students with citizenship were also arrested on trumped-up charges for occupying public spaces and voicing dissent.
“What foreign policy do we pose a threat to? What foreign policy? There is no foreign policy, there’s total chaos,” said Abu Irshaid. “And Salah is a victim of this chaos, of this prioritization of Israel over America, and of the trampling of the Constitution of the United States.”
Will Perry, former executive director of the Milwaukee Islamic Da’wah Center and a longtime leader in the city’s Black and Muslim communities, said the U.S. government has targeted Black and Brown movement leaders who challenge injustice for much of the country’s history.
“That’s the strategy: to cut off the head, cut off the outspoken ones who stand up for democracy and justice,” Perry said in an interview with Truthout.
Perry cited outspoken Black leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Malcom X, and Nelson Mandela. Like Martin Luther King Jr., these leaders were imprisoned on political charges over the course of their struggles for justice.
“That’s always been the case: the ones that speak the loudest are the most targeted,” Perry said, adding that authorities target leaders to weaken the broader movement. “But it does the opposite, it helps to strengthen and unite the community … it has just strengthened our resolve to seek justice for Sarsour, and all of the other people who have been taken into detention.”
JoCasta Zamarripa and Alex Brower, two progressive members of the Milwaukee city council, have also said Sarsour is a lawful, permanent resident who has lived in the community for three decades. Members of the Milwaukee Delegation of Democratic State Legislators have also called for Sarsour’s release.
“The unacceptable activities by ICE — and especially illegally detaining [people] without due process — must stop immediately,” Zamarripa and Brower said in a joint statement on April 2. “How dare federal ICE agents come into our community and unlawfully detain a grandfather, a faith leader, a Wisconsinite!”
Janan Najeeb, executive director of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition, said she has known Sarsour and his family for years as they both have roots in Palestine. Najeeb said Sarsour comes from a large family and is known for his generosity and philanthropy. He sits on the boards of national organizations that advocate for a free Palestine — which may have put Sarsour on Canary Mission’s radar. Pro-Israel groups have long targeted nonprofits that advocate for Palestinian rights.
“He is really the nicest person you can imagine, and there’s nothing dangerous about him except him for the fact that he speaks out for Palestine,” Najeeb told Truthout in an interview.
Due the outpouring of public support for Sarsour following his arrest, Najeeb said ICE and Homeland Security released multiple statements on Sarsour with vague allegations against him, which generally trace back to accusations made against him as a child by the Israeli government an apparent “interview” with Sarsour’s brother by Israeli authorities in 1998.
“So, they are working to throw the kitchen sink at him and each time changing their story,” Najeeb said.
DHS has said Sarsour was convicted in Israel of“throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli armed forces.” Najeeb said Sarsour was arrested as a 15-year-old living in the West Bank, where the occupying Israeli military works with extremist settlers to displace Palestinians from their homes, often with violence.
“This joke about him throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of soldiers, these are people who have flunked basic history, because Israeli soldiers don’t live in the West Bank, they don’t live anywhere near the Palestinians,” Najeeb said. “The Palestinians have to go through checkpoints, and they are not allowed in different areas where Israelis live.”
Najeeb said at age 15, Sarsour was tortured for weeks while imprisoned by Israel and forced to sign documents written in Hebrew, a language he did not speak. For years, human rights groups have reported on Israeli military courts that have incarcerated thousands of Palestinian children for allegedly throwing stones at occupiers based on coerced confessions. From 2005 to 2010, at least 93 percent of Palestinian children convicted of stone throwing were given prison sentences.
“So, we know about the kind of kangaroo courts and military courts that minors have to go through in Israel,” Najeeb said. “He already served his sentence in an Israeli prison. Why is he being arrested decades later in Milwaukee? What American law allows that to happen?”
While DHS has not publicly released any evidence, Homeland Security’s claim that Sarsour is “suspected of funding terror organizations” echoes a 2016 congressional testimony submitted by Jonathan Schanzer, a pro-Israel analyst at the far right Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The testimony cites a 2001 FBI memo noting an alleged interview about a Palestinian charity with Sarsour’s brother by Israeli authorities after his arrest. Truthout has not confirmed whether the interview was coerced or actually occurred in the first place.
Schanzer’s testimony also points out that Sarsour chaired the 2015 national conference for American Muslims for Palestine, which pro-Israel propagandists have for years attempted to link financially to Hamas in Gaza. American Muslims for Palestine has successfully fought to dismiss such claims in court.
In March, Schanzer held an “emergency briefing” with Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, a group that directly supports Israel’s military. An independent UN commission has said that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. In an ongoing case, the International Court of Justice has also said that Israel is plausibly committing genocide; Israeli leaders have warrants out for their arrest from the International Criminal Court.
“They try to instill fear into our hearts because they know they cannot win this debate on its merits,” Abu Irshaid said.
Canary Mission is one of several groups doxxing and harassing pro-Palestine activists online, often reporting them to federal law enforcement. Unlike a standard nonprofit, Canary Mission keeps its membership and funding sources secret. Najeeb said the group is linked to Islamophobic hate speech, and experts say it exists to silence and terrorize people.
When an alarming video of masked ICE agents abducting Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk off the street went viral in March 2025, Canary Mission took credit with a celebratory post that linked to Öztürk’s profile on its website. The Trump administration claimed without evidence that Öztürk supported the Palestinian resistance party Hamas, but the only evidence for her arrest cited in an internal memo was an op-ed published in the student newspaper on the genocide in Gaza.
Abu Irshaid said a system that targets Muslims and anti-genocide activists for their speech can be weaponized against anyone, regardless of their citizenship status.
“So, America has to reckon with this now,” Abu Irshaid said. “It’s no longer about minorities, you can be a white American and be shot in broad daylight and called a domestic terrorist, as what happened with two American citizens who were shot [and killed] by a rogue agency called ICE. And you could be abducted from the middle of the street just because you say you disagree with this government, this foreign policy.”
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