British political commentator Sami Hamdi is going to voluntarily leave the US after spending more than two weeks in immigration detention over what his supporters say was his criticism of Israel. The Trump administration has accused him of cheering on Hamas.<\/p>\n
Hamdi, who is Muslim, was on a speaking tour in the US when he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 26. He had just addressed the annual gala for the Sacramento, California, chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, the day before his arrest.<\/p>\n
In a statement late Monday, the organisation said Hamdi had \u201cchosen to accept an offer to leave the United States voluntarily.\u201d \u201cIt is this simple: Sami never should have spent a single night in an ICE cell. His only real \u2018offense\u2019 was speaking clearly about Israel\u2019s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians,\u201d said the CEO of CAIR\u2019s California chapter, Hussam Ayloush, in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hamdi\u2019s detention was part of broader efforts by the Trump administration to identify and potentially expel thousands of foreigners in the United States who it says have either fomented or participated in unrest or publicly supported protests against Israel\u2019s military operations in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Those enforcement actions have been criticised by civil rights groups as violations of constitutional protections for freedom of speech, which apply to anyone in the United States and not just to American citizens.<\/p>\n
Zahra Billoo, Executive Director of CAIR\u2019s San Francisco office, said Tuesday that the logistics of Hamdi\u2019s departure were still being worked out but that it might happen later this week. Billoo said there were \u201cno conditions to the voluntary departure\u201d and that he\u2019s not barred from seeking another US visa in the future.<\/p>\n
CAIR said Hamdi\u2019s charging document in immigration court did not accuse him of criminal conduct or security concerns but only listed a visa overstay, which they blamed on the government revoking his visa.<\/p>\n
Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in a statement Tuesday that Hamdi had requested voluntary departure and \u201cICE is happily arranging his removal from this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The State Department said due to \u201cvisa record confidentiality,\u201d it could not comment on specific cases.<\/p>\n
CAIR has said that Hamdi, 35, was detained in response to his vocal criticism of the Israeli government during a US speaking tour.<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security said at the time of Hamdi\u2019s arrest that the State Department had revoked his visa and that ICE had put him in immigration proceedings. Homeland Security later accused him of supporting Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.<\/p>\n
In a statement at the time, McLaughlin cited remarks he made in a video posted online shortly after the Hamas attacks in which he asked: \u201cHow many of you felt it in your hearts when you got the news that it happened? How many of you felt the euphoria? Allah Akbar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamdi said later his intent was not to praise the attacks but to suggest that the violence was \u201ca natural consequence of the oppression that is being put on the Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n
The State Department has not said specifically what Hamdi said or did that initiated the revocation but in a post on X the department said: \u201cThe United States has no obligation to host foreigners\u201d who the administration deems to \u201csupport terrorism and actively undermine the safety of Americans. We continue to revoke the visas of persons engaged in such activity.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Ends<\/p>\n
Published By: <\/p>\n
Aashish Vashistha<\/p>\n
Published On: <\/p>\n
Nov 12, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British political commentator Sami Hamdi is going to voluntarily leave the US after spending more than two weeks…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":373062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[99,50,168140,179548,179550,277,179549],"class_list":{"0":"post-373440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-israel","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-sami-hamdi","11":"tag-sami-hamdi-to-leave-us","12":"tag-sami-hamdi-us-news","13":"tag-trump","14":"tag-who-is-sami-hamdi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115535830485710009","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}