When she received a text message that altered everything, Soumaya Hamdi was planning the family trip she would soon be taking with her husband. “Is it true that Sami is being abducted”? a friend contacted.
She called her husband, British-Tunisian journalist Sami Hamdi, earlier that day to check in on him while he was on a speaking engagement in Israel’s Gaza war. When he didn’t answer, Soumaya had assumed he was at a speaking engagement.
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Instead, he had been detained by US immigration authorities, news that came as “a complete shock”, she told Al Jazeera.
She continued, “I don’t believe anyone ever wants to read that text message.”
October 26 was Sunday. Sami had been stopped at San Francisco International Airport. His visa was suspended by US authorities two days prior following a campaign by anti-Muslim and pro-Israel social media influencers.
His lawyers filed urgent petitions against his detention and his wife, British parliamentarians, and UK civil society organizations, all calling for the government to take action following his arrest 35-year-old critic of Israel’s genocide against Gaza.
His case is the latest in what Muslim advocacy groups describe as a campaign to silence pro-Palestinian voices in the US through immigration enforcement.
“Bundled into a black van,” the phrase.
Since the US war on Gaza first started in October 2023, Hamdi’s speech tour was just his most recent across the country. Since then, pro-Palestinians and American Muslims have gained more followers for his message of continuing support for the Palestinian people.
On Saturday evening, he addressed the annual gala of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil right advocacy group, in Sacramento and was due to speak at another CAIR event in Florida the next day.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers approached him as he passed through the domestic terminal at the airport in San Francisco on Sunday morning.
According to Soumaya, “They took him to a big black van,” quoting what her husband later said when she reached him. “He asked them, and this must have been the second or third time, he said, ‘ I need to be able to tell someone that I’ve been taken by ICE. ‘ They responded, “OK, you got one text message. “
Before officers took his phone, Hamdi managed to leave a brief message to CAIR. When Soumaya later called, an ICE officer answered and hung up on her.
She claimed that the officer “hung me up” before turning the phone off.
Hamdi finally managed to call his wife for 30 seconds from the Californian airport’s Golden State Annex, which is located about five to six hours away, around midnight.
“He sounded really under pressure”, Soumaya recalled.
Days later, she claimed, authorities interrogated him without his lawyers present and transferred him to a different facility for processing before returning him.
Since his detention, she has spoken with him twice.
The couple have three children, including a 10-month-old baby. Soumaya said, “The kids can’t reach him because they can’t.” “Sami is a family man,” he says.
Legal challenge
A federal habeas corpus petition was filed on Tuesday by CAIR’s California chapter, which called for the government to justify Hamdi’s detention as well as an urgent temporary restraining order to stop the move.
The filings aim to prevent Hamdi from being moved to a far-off place, according to CAIR, which could ensnare him from his friends and lawyers.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Hamdi “cheered on” the October 7 Hamas-led attacks, while the spokesperson for the DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, said, “Those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country”.
Hamdi said, “Don’t pity them [the Palestinians], they don’t want your pity, celebrate their victory,” in an edited clip shared by MEMRI, a pro-Israel organization that claims to be an extremism monitor, to support his detention.
Hamdi clarified his remarks a week later and on numerous occasions thereafter. “What Muslims are celebrating is not war, they’re celebrating the revival of a cause – a just cause”, Hamdi told The Thinking Muslim podcast a week after October 7. In Hamdi’s own words, “Racism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, genocide, and war crimes need no justifications for humanity to recognize them and stand steadfast against them” have his family remarked.
Soumaya criticized the accusations made against her husband as “outrageous” and “smear campaigns that targeted his support for Palestinian rights.”
“The reason why these allegations have been made about Sami is because he’s become too effective of a speaker”, said Soumaya. He claims that the American government should not send billions to help Israel when American citizens require housing and healthcare. This is not to say that he has been criticizing the United States or a foreign government, and that is unfair.
Sami’s father, Mohamed El-Hachmi Hamdi, wrote an open letter to Vice President JD Vance, saying that his son should be encouraged, not stymied, and prohibited from entering America.
Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco Bay Area office, which assembled Hamdi’s legal defence, told Al Jazeera the challenge aims to protect Hamdi’s constitutional rights.
No charges have been brought against Sami, she said, referring to far-right activists who claimed credit for his detention, despite what Laura Loomer, Amy Mekelberg, and various government accounts have been tweeting.
Billoo compared Hamdi’s case to those of other foreign pro-Palestine advocates detained by ICE, including Badar Khan Suri, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Mahmoud Khalil.
The Trump administration has invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law being broadly interpreted to allow the government to target foreign nationals whose speech it deems harmful to US foreign policy.
Hassan Ahmad, an immigration lawyer who represents Sami and has handled similar cases like Suri’s, claimed this shows “a broad crackdown on Palestinian advocacy through immigration law.”
He claimed that there is “distinct but frequently overlap between anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, and we’ve seen that more since October.” This is part of the larger problem of de jure Islamophobia in the US justice system”.
Billoo claimed that “this is using immigration to spread structural anti-Palestinian racism.”
Following the onset of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which “increased to levels we hadn’t seen before,” Billoo continued, CAIR was concerned about the rise in Islamophobia.
According to CAIR’s latest civil rights report, the organisation received a record 8, 658 complaints in 2024, the highest since it began compiling data in 1996.
The report attributed the rise to what it called “the US-backed genocide,” which “drove a wave of Islamophobia in the United States,” with complaints spanning hate crimes, education, law enforcement encounters, and employment discrimination.
The new report from the US human rights organization Common Dreams, Solidarity as a Crime, highlights the “nationwide campaign to silence solidarity” with Palestinians across the country, citing censorship, arrests, campus crackdowns, and deportations aimed at pro-Palestinian advocacy.
‘ Wholly inadequate ‘ UK response
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) “is in touch with his family and the local authorities” as it stated to Al Jazeera.
However, Soumaya called the response “wholly inadequate.” She said US authorities are “blocking” FCDO officials from receiving information about why Hamdi’s visa was revoked.
She said, “We’re talking about a British citizen who has already been given the right to enter the US.” The FCDO ought to acknowledge that this is “absolutely alarming.”
Five UK members of parliament, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, issued a statement last week calling on the government to secure consular access and demand Hamdi’s safe return.
He was also requested by the National Union of Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists. There is no proof that a journalist has committed a terrorist offence, according to Seamus Dooley, assistant general secretary of the NUJ, and he should be released.
The Muslim Council of Britain urged the government to take “urgent diplomatic action”, saying, “Press freedom cannot be selective and we urge the British Government to come to the defence of its citizens being detained in this manner”.
Billoo emphasized that there are risks that go beyond just one person. We are all forced to wonder: Are we safe if the US government treats a prominent political analyst, journalist, and British citizen in this manner. What can we say”?
His wife claims that the family has been devastated by the arrest. When he travels, Simi misses the kids. He misses all of his family”, Soumaya said. His parents worry a lot about his well-being, too, and his mom and dad are.
