Wife of British journalist ‘abducted by ICE’ speaks out: ‘We’re being kept in the dark’

Alice Speri in New York

The wife of a British political commentator who was detained by immigration authorities while on a speaking tour of the US said she had only been able to speak with him for “30 seconds” since he was taken into custody on Sunday over his pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Soumaya Hamdi told the Guardian she first learned her husband, Sami Hamdi, was detained at San Francisco international airport when a friend asked her to confirm rumors he had been “abducted by ICE”. When he was finally able to briefly call her, Hamdi only had enough time to say he had been taken to an immigration detention center in McFarland, California, where he remains.

“We’re being kept in the dark,” Soumaya said, adding that all she knew was that her husband was given a November court date as the US government seeks to deport him. The couple have three children, including a 10-month-old baby.

“I can’t begin to even try to explain to you how distressing it is for them to try to understand that they can’t speak to their father, whom they talk to all the time and send funny videos and jokes and do video calls with.

“Sami is a British citizen, he has been travelling regularly and often to the United States on a valid visa that’s not due to expire anytime soon,” she added. “To hear through a third party that he has been abducted, effectively, by the United States government is incredibly distressing.”

The US state department did not respond to a request for comment but said in a social media post that “the United States has no obligation to host foreigners who support terrorism and actively undermine the safety of Americans” and that it would “continue to revoke the visas of persons engaged in such activity”.

This would appear to be a reference to remarks made by Hamdi at the time of the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas. He was recorded saying that Palestinians should “celebrate their victory” and asked if they had felt “euphoria” over what had taken place. He later sought to clarify what he had said.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, pointed to a social media post by Tricia McLaughlin, the press secretary, in which she confirmed that Hamdi’s visa was revoked and he was in custody “pending removal”.

“Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country,” she wrote. “It’s common sense.”

Officials have offered no evidence to back their accusation against Hamdi. But the DHS shared a video clip by the pro-Israel group Memri in which he praised the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks.

“I know that many Muslims are pitying the Palestinians for what’s happening, but I think that underplays the extraordinary bravery and the victories that they secured which I think will be a turning point moving forward for the Palestine/Israel relationship,” Hamdi says in an edited clip from a public speaking engagement “Don’t pity them, they don’t want your pity, celebrate their victory.

“Allah has shown the world that no normalization can erase the Palestinian cause,” he also says. “How many of you feel it in your hearts when you got the news that it happened? How many of you felt the euphoria?”

Hamdi’s wife called the US government’s allegations against her husband “outrageous” and said the videos were “edited in a way to frame Sami in a horrible light and produced by an organization that is very well known to be anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, Islamophobic and out there to target people who are speaking up against the genocide against Palestinians.”

Steven Stalinsky, Memri’s executive director, said in a statement the group documents “extremist Imams and Islamist organizations in the US and the west” and that “Sami Hamdi is one of the individuals covered by this project”.

“MEMRI is proud of its diverse staff with members of every major religion, many of whom are from the Arab and Muslim world,” Stalinsky added.

Hamdi sought to clarify the reference to “celebrations” in other speaking engagements.

“That’s a very important message to the Muslims: we don’t celebrate blood lust, we don’t celebrate death and we don’t celebrate war,” he said in a podcast appearance days after the Hamas attacks.

“What Muslims are celebrating is not war, they’re celebrating the revival of a cause – a just cause – that everybody thought was dead, this is an important distinction … I don’t celebrate war, I don’t celebrate death.”

Hamdi’s detention and attempted deportation is the latest in a series by the Trump administration of foreign nationals who have been accused of no crimes but whose pro-Palestinian advocacy the US government has declared a “threat”.

Last month, Judge William G Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee, ruled in a landmark federal court decision that such actions by the administration are unconstitutional and that foreign nationals in the US “have the same free speech rights as the rest of us”, he wrote.

Ramya Krishnan, a senior attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute, which argued the case, said that “detaining someone who is lawfully present here in the middle of a speaking tour because you don’t like what they have to say is a brazen violation of the first amendment”.

“Attempting to deport non-citizens based on political views is exactly what the court in AAUP v Rubio said that the administration can’t do,” she added.

Krishnan noted that labeling pro-Palestinian advocacy “support of terrorism” as the administration has routinely done does not void free speech protections. If that were the case, “then the administration could censor any speech it doesn’t like by calling it support for terrorism – as it increasingly has been doing”, she said. “And that’s a treacherous road that I don’t think any of us should want to go down.”

Hamdi’s detention appears to have been spurred by a campaign led by Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer and self-proclaimed “proud Islamophobe” who took credit for his arrest following her “relentless pressure on the State Department and Department of Homeland Security”, she wrote.

Soumaya saider husband had been aware of rightwing influencers’ attacks against him, “but he didn’t really pay much mind to them because there’s no evidence or any truth to the allegations that they’re making against him”.

While he was “very aware of the political climate” in the US, she added, he also felt that being a British citizen offered “more protection” .

Hamdi was due to reunite with her husband in New York in a few days, but has been advised to cancel her trip. She also said that she has sought the help of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office but that their response has been “really disappointing”.

“The United States is one of our closest allies. Sami has entered the country on several occasions, and he is there legally. You know, he has basic rights,” she said. “They say that there’s not much that they can do. And they’ve also said that [US] authorities are actually preventing them from receiving information. The United States government is not cooperating with them.” (The Foreign Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

“This doesn’t just concern Sami, it concerns everybody who values freedom of speech, everybody who values freedom of political expression,” she added. “These are values that underpin our society in the United Kingdom and these are the values of the United States.”

Hamdi has been visited in detention by a team of lawyers with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which had organized his speaking tour of the US. The attorneys are seeking his immediate release, but also requested he not be transferred to a faraway state, as ICE has routinely done in the past.

In a statement, the group’s California chapter said Hamdi was “in positive spirits despite his abduction and the ongoing deprivation of his freedom and more dedicated than ever before to continue standing in solidarity with Americans advocating for free speech, human rights, and justice for all”.

“We again encourage the state department and ICE to stop abducting journalists, students and others with valid visas based on their criticism of a foreign government’s genocide,” the group added. “Every single person on American soil, including immigrants and visitors, has the right to free speech and other fundamental freedoms.”