Deportation case against Salah Sarsour hinges on disputed Israeli convictions

Attorneys for Milwaukee mosque leader Salah Sarsour made the case he should not be deported in a day-long hearing that delved into the circumstances of his decades-old convictions by the Israeli government.

His attorneys argued that Sarsour's confessions were coerced under torture, he was not actually guilty of the convictions in Israeli military court, and he did not understand what had happened procedurally in the case.

The arguments came during a hearing July 22 in federal immigration court in Chicago. Such hearings are structured similarly to a trial, where witnesses are called and cross-examined in an adversarial way. The hearing was the latest step in Sarsour's deportation case, which has drawn national attention since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him March 30.

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Immigration Judge Jayme Salinardi did not make a decision in the case. Additional witnesses and testimony are scheduled for July 29. The decision is expected to be appealed by either party, no matter the ruling.

Sarsour is a local furniture store owner, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee's board of directors and a nationally known pro-Palestinian activist.

Growing up in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory, Sarsour was arrested twice by Israeli authorities – once as a 15-year-old in 1988 and later as a 22-year-old in 1994, after he'd already moved to the U.S. and returned to the region to visit his family. Israel then accused him of having ties to Hamas.

As part of his deportation order, the U.S. government argued Sarsour lied on two citizenship applications in the 1990s because he did not mention convictions stemming from those arrests.

At the July 22 hearing, Sarsour's attorneys argued that the Israeli military court system lacks due process protections for Palestinian detainees. They said the government used harsh and coercive interrogation tactics against Sarsour to extract confessions.

Supporters believe that Sarsour, a leader in the national group American Muslims for Palestine, is being targeted for his pro-Palestinian speech. He is a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. and has lived in the country legally for more than 32 years. 

Sarsour's legal team has said he did, in fact, answer questions by American authorities about those convictions at several points over the last three decades.

The wording on the citizenship application asked whether Sarsour "committed a crime," said Patrick Taurel, Sarsour's attorney. Because he was innocent and wrongfully convicted, Taurel said, Sarsour didn't mention them when filling out citizenship applications.

The government would need to prove that Sarsour "willfully" lied on the forms, Taurel said at a news conference after the hearing.

"The fact that he repeatedly disclosed these events in Israel-Palestine show that he obviously wasn't trying to hide anything at all," Taurel said.

Questions over Sarsour's charges in the 1990s persist

The hearing shed more light on the government's stated reasons for detaining Sarsour.

Immigration court filings and proceedings are typically closed to the public, and little had been released until this point about the government's stance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio last year had issued a memo saying Sarsour was deportable on foreign policy grounds.

The government attorney, Scott Jebson, said during the hearing that Sarsour's 1988 conviction was for throwing a Molotov cocktail and throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.

Taurel, Sarsour's attorney, countered that it was "terribly unclear" the exact charges Sarsour was convicted of by the Israeli military, and that relevant Israeli documents explaining the convictions were unavailable.

The government hasn't proven the "bare minimum," Taurel later said, "that there is even a conviction at all" in relation to the 1994 arrest.

Sari Bashi, an expert on Palestinians in Israeli detention who was called as a witness, said she reviewed the available documents and could not find any conviction records from 1994. A list of pending charges from that time lists "membership in an unlawful association" and "helping wanted people," Bashi said.

Regarding his 1994 arrest, Sarsour said in a recent declaration that he was held in solitary confinement and beaten repeatedly until he fell unconscious, and soldiers demanded he confess to crimes he didn't commit. After some time, he signed a document in Hebrew, a language he didn't understand, desperate to be released, according to that declaration.

Bashi, who was formerly with Human Rights Watch and now leads a prominent anti-torture organization in Israel, also said the records from 1988 did not establish that Sarsour was convicted of throwing a Molotov cocktail. They do show convictions for throwing stones and for "disorderly conduct in a public place." The disorderly conduct charge can encompass "anything and everything," Bashi said.

The government did not bring any witnesses. Jebson, the Department of Justice attorney, largely focused on trying to poke holes in the credibility of the witnesses and Sarsour.

Jebson argued that if Sarsour didn't mention his convictions in two citizenship applications, he could be lying about other details.

Jebson also questioned the defense's witnesses about why the court records from Sarsour's 1994 case make no mention of Sarsour's allegations of being mistreated in custody.

Bashi said that because harsh treatment of detainees was so common, it may not have made a difference for Sarsour's attorney at the time to mention in court documents.

"That is not something that works in a military court," Bashi said. "If you're trying for a plea deal, that might not be your best move."

Witnesses testify about confessions, Israeli custody

Sarsour himself did not testify during the hearing. His brother, Mohammad Sarsour, an Oak Creek resident, testified that he attended Sarsour's court hearings in Israel in 1994 and 1995.

He said a member of the Israeli secret service asked him to try to convince Sarsour to plead guilty. Mohammad Sarsour did not agree to do that.

Alan Hirsch, an expert in false confessions and a retired professor at Williams College, reviewed documents related to Sarsour's confessions in Israel. He testified that he found the confessions to be "highly unreliable" based on the interrogation tactics, which he characterized as using "extreme aggression."

Based on the available information, he said, Sarsour's confessions did not meet two key criteria: They did not generate new evidence, and they did not corroborate evidence independently obtained.

Physical torture creates a higher risk of a false confession, he said. He added that one of the groups most prone to forced confessions was juveniles.

In the 1994 case, the Israeli interrogator's account is that Sarsour freely offered a confession. But Hirsch said that assertion "warrants skepticism" because Sarsour would have known that pleading guilty would mean more jail time.

Bashi said the conviction rate of Palestinians in Israeli military court in the West Bank was in the high 90s at the time of Sarsour's arrests. It is currently 96%, she said.

"The system lacks very basic due process standards," she said of the Israeli military legal system.

She added that the use of torture against Palestinian detainees is "systematic and widespread." Based on her work with Palestinian detainees, she said several forms of mistreatment were used in Israeli military detention, including prolonged stress positions, beatings, forced nudity, being exposed to extreme temperatures, being threatened with rape and having family members arrested.

Bashi also said confessions were typically handwritten in Hebrew and were not translated, and when she has interviewed detainees, they "have no idea" what they signed or what they were convicted of.

Immigration judge in Sarsour case has high asylum denial rate

Immigration court is an administrative court housed under the U.S. Department of Justice. Immigration judges, who make decisions on asylum and deportation cases, are appointed by the attorney general. There is no jury.

Salinardi, who is an assistant chief immigration judge based in Kansas City, rules against asylum claims at a high rate. He denies asylum claims 90% of the time, compared to a national average of 59%, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data.

Before he was appointed by Democratic Attorney General Loretta Lynch in 2016, Salinardi was an attorney for ICE.

At least five witnesses are expected to testify at the next hearing, and a third hearing may need to be scheduled to finish all the witness testimony. Sarsour may testify, his attorneys said.

Sophie Carson is a general assignment reporter who reports on religion and faith, immigrants and refugees and more. Contact her at [email protected] or 920-323-5758.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Deportation case against Salah Sarsour hinges on disputed Israeli convictions