Mon 03 November 2025:
The family of British pro-Palestine journalist Sami Hamdi has called on the UK government to intervene after he suffered a health emergency while being held in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, QNN reported.
They revealed that Hamdi, who was on a speaking tour, experienced severe pain on his left side and urgently needed medical attention. While he has since received care, his family remains deeply concerned that his continued detention is harming his health.
A US federal court has raised concerns about the legality of his detention.
Sami’s case is the latest in what Muslim advocacy groups describe as a campaign to silence pro-Palestinian voices in the US through immigration enforcement.
It was Sunday, October 26. Sami had been stopped at San Francisco International Airport. Unbeknownst to him, his visa had been revoked by US authorities two days earlier after a pressure campaign by anti-Muslim and pro-Israel social media influencers.
The detention of the 35-year-old critic of Israel’s genocide on Gaza has sparked a legal battle, with his lawyers filing emergency petitions against his detention and his wife, British parliamentarians and UK civil society groups demanding their government take action.
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.
But as he moved through San Francisco airport’s domestic terminal on Sunday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers approached him.
__________________________________________________________________________
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaAtNxX8fewmiFmN7N22
__________________________________________________________________________
According to Soumaya, wife of Sami Hamdi, “They took him to a big black van,” recounting what her husband later told her when she later 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.’ So they said, ‘OK, you got one text message.’”
Hamdi managed to send a brief message to CAIR before officers confiscated his phone. When Soumaya later called, an ICE officer answered and hung up on her.
“The officer himself hung me up, then switched the phone off,” she said.
It was around midnight when Hamdi was finally able to call his wife for 30 seconds from the Golden State Annex detention centre in California, some five to six hours from the airport.
“He sounded really under pressure,” Soumaya recalled.
Days later, authorities transferred him in the middle of the night to another facility for processing before returning him and interrogating him without his lawyers present, she said.
She has spoken to him twice since his detention.
The couple have three children, including a 10-month-old baby. “The kids don’t understand why they can’t reach him,” Soumaya said. “Sami is a family man.”
On Tuesday, CAIR’s California chapter filed a federal habeas corpus petition, requiring the government to justify Hamdi’s detention, along with an emergency temporary restraining order to stop authorities from moving him.
The filings aim to stop officials from moving Hamdi to a distant facility, a step CAIR says could isolate him from his lawyers and friends.
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.”
It shared an edited clip by MEMRI, a pro-Israel group which says it is an extremism monitor, to justify his detention, in which Hamdi said: “Don’t pity them [the Palestinians], they don’t want your pity, celebrate their victory.”
A week later, and on several subsequent occasions, Hamdi clarified his remarks. “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. His family have pointed to Hamdi’s own words – “Racism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, genocide, and war crimes need no explanation or definitions for humanity to recognise them and stand firmly against them”.
Soumaya, dismissed the allegations against her husband as “outrageous” and a “smear campaign targeting his advocacy 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’s on record as saying that billions shouldn’t be sent by the American government to save Israel when American citizens need housing and healthcare … So it’s not like he’s been criticising the United States, he’s been criticising a foreign government, and he’s being targeted for that.”
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
__________________________________________________________________________
FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:
WhatsApp CHANNEL
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaAtNxX8fewmiFmN7N22
TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent
FACEBOOK (CLICK HERE)
https://web.facebook.com/ipindependent
YOUTUBE (CLICK HERE)
https://www.youtube.com/@ipindependent
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
