LONDON (AP) — British political commentator Sami Hamdi said Thursday upon his return to Britain that he is considering suing U.S. authorities for holding him in an immigration detention center over what he said were his views on the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Two days after it was reported that he was leaving the US voluntarily, Hamdi praised federal judges for acquitting him of what he called a “botched” detention carried out by “extremists” in the US government.
“What I want to say is that this was not just an attack on me, it was an attack on the freedoms of ordinary Americans and citizens around the world,” he told reporters and supporters outside a hotel near London's Heathrow Airport after his return.
Hamdi, a Muslim, was on a speaking tour in the United States when he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 26. He had just performed at the annual gala in Sacramento, California, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the day before his arrest.
At the time of Hamdi's arrest, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the U.S. State Department had revoked his visa and that ICE had placed him in immigration proceedings. He was later accused by National Security of supporting Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Hamdi later stated that his intention was not to glorify the attacks, but to suggest that the violence was “a natural consequence of the oppression that Palestinians are subjected to.”
“I didn’t do anything illegal in the United States,” he said. “Everything was within the limits of the visa. Everything was within the limits of what the visa allowed me to do. The visa was revoked because of my defense of Palestine. It was revoked because of my defense of Gaza.”
Hamdi's detention was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to identify and potentially expel thousands of foreigners in the United States who it said either incited or participated in the unrest or publicly supported protests against Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip.
These enforcement actions have been criticized by civil rights groups as a violation of the Constitution's guarantees of free speech, which apply to all residents of the United States, not just American citizens.
Hamdi, 35, said he was discussing with his lawyers whether to sue the US authorities, but said he was hesitant on the issue because the US State Department and the federal judiciary were dominated by “cool heads”.
“As for these cooler minds, I’d rather celebrate that,” he said. “I won this case, the extremists failed to silence my voice, they failed to take away my freedom of speech. America stood by me.”
Hamdi said there were no conditions for his voluntary departure and that he was not barred from obtaining another U.S. visa in the future.
