The Shift: Trump administration detains British journalist over Israel criticism

Over the weekend, British pundit and Israel critic Sami Hamdi was detained by ICE agents at the San Francisco International Airport.

In a social media post, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin announced that Hamdi’s visa was revoked and that he was pending removal.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.

The arrest is yet another example of how far-right commentators wield influence in this administration.

Days before Hamdi was detained, the Islamophobic right-wing activist Amy Mekelburg called on the government to deport him. She claimed that he was “training U.S. Muslims in digital agitation, electoral sabotage, and political warfare in alignment with Muslim Brotherhood doctrine.”

“Sami Hamdi is not a journalist passing through America — he is a deployed actor from an overseas cadre system that grooms Western Muslims for on-shore mobilization,” tweeted Mekelburg.

In a series of tweets, Islamophobic conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer took credit for the arrest, claiming that Hamdi was “an individual with Islamic terror ties.”

Attorneys with the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CA) have filed a habeas petition to protect Hamdi’s constitutional rights and for an emergency temporary restraining order to prevent the Trump team from separating Hamdi from his lawyers.

This week, Hamdi’s legal team met with him at Golden State Annex in McFarland, California, where he’s being detained.

“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,” said the group in a statement. “Every single person on American soil, including immigrants and visitors, has the right to free speech and other fundamental freedoms.”

“If the government can cancel a valid visa because it does not like what a person says or believes, then anyone legally visiting, studying or working in our country—whether conservative or liberal, religious or secular—would be in danger of abduction and deportation if the government happens to dislike their speech,” it continued. “This is not what the Constitution permits or envisions, and this practice must end with Sami Hamdi.”

Hamdi’s wife. Soumaya Hamdi, told The Guardian that she’s been “kept in the dark” and has barely been able to speak with her husband.

The couple has three young children.

“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,” she told the website.

“Sami is a British citizen, he has been traveling 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 State Department has not revealed a specific reason for Hamdi’s detention. However, they celebrated his arrest in a tweet.

“We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who support terrorism and actively undermine the safety of Americans. We continue to revoke the visas of persons engaged in such activity,” they wrote.

Attacks against Mamdani

We’re less than a week away from the NYC mayoral election, and the pro-Israel, Islamophobic attacks on Zohran Mamdani have picked up steam.

Eretz Nehederet, an Israeli satire show on Channel 12, mocks the candidate as a terror-supporting Jew-hater and makes light of Mamdani’s admission that his Muslim aunt felt unsafe in the wake of 9/11.

“My dear Jewish friends, I promise you I will fight antisemitism,” declares the actor playing him. “I think of the Holocaust every day, that horrible time when Jews were transported by trains to concentration camps – and it always reminds me of how my aunt stopped taking the train because she was afraid to wear her hijab after 9/11.”

Vice President JD Vance also mocked the story. “According to Zohran the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks,” he tweeted.

At a press conference endorsing Andrew Cuomo indicted, outgoing Mayor Eric Adams launched his own Islamophobic attack. “You see what’s playing out in other countries because of Islamic extremism,” said Adams. “Not Muslims – let’s not mix this up – but those Islamic extremists that are burning churches in Nigeria, that are destroying communities in Germany.”

During a recent radio interview, Cuomo laughed when the host said Mamdani would cheer another 9/11 attack. Then his campaign posted an AI-generated video showing a Black man putting on a keffiyeh, stealing from a store, and declaring himself a “criminal for Mamdani.”

The ad was quickly deleted.

Last week, Mamdani released a s ix-minute video addressing the recent attacks.

“To be Muslim in New York is to expect indignity,” he said. “But indignity does not make us distinct — there are many New Yorkers who face it. It is the tolerance of that indignity that does,” Mamdani said. “In an era of ever-diminishing bipartisanship, Islamophobia has emerged as one of the few areas of agreement.”

Mamdani has also faced criticism for 2023 comments he made about the IDF training NYPD officers.

“For anyone to care about these issues, we have to make them hyper-local. We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF,” said Mamdani while on a panel at a DSA convention.

“We have to make it materially connected to their life,” he added. “We are in a country where those connections abound, especially in New York City, you have so many opportunities to make clear the ways in which that struggle over there is tied to capitalist interests over here.”

Mamdani is even facing backlash for these remarks from some liberals.

“I like Zohran but this is actually bad and anti-Semitic,” tweeted writer Jill Filipovic, after sharing a video of the clip.

“Mamdani should acknowledge that—while the NYPD has an extensive relationship w/ the IDF, inc trainings..his Sept. 2023 claim at a DSA conference..was..an overstatement that lends itself to conspiratorial thinking,” wrote Professor Monica Marks.

“Totally agree,” said writer Peter Beinart, after retweeting Marks.