Salah Sarsour: A Pillar Taken, A Community That Will Not Yield

Over three decades of traveling to Milwaukee for the work of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and Muslim American Society Milwaukee Conventions, I came to understand that Salah Sarsour operates on a different frequency than most people. Time and again, he was the one who met me at the airport (sometimes all the way in Chicago), drove me to Milwaukee, picked me up before a lecture, and — never to be skipped under any circumstances — gathered all the community leaders afterward for dinner at the Omega Restaurant, his favorite spot for a long time. If work kept him from the earlier logistics, he would send his son or nephew to handle it. But the dinner? Salah was always there. That dinner, warm and long and full of laughter, was his way of making sure that no one left without feeling seen and cared for.

That is Salah in a sentence: he makes people feel seen.

He is a big man with a bigger personality — a loving bear — always smiling, always moving toward people rather than away from them. There is a rare kind of emotional generosity in Salah. He has an instinct for comfort and for giving attention, for knowing when someone needs a word of encouragement or simply to feel that they matter in the middle of a busy gathering. To be around him is to be reminded that warmth is not weakness; it is, in fact, a form of strength.

Anyone who has worked alongside Salah on board or on the steering committee of a conference or program knows what it means to have him there. He is the one who stays up all night to resolve a logistical crisis. He is concerned about everyone’s security and makes sure all aspects are covered. He is the one who makes sure a late-arriving guest has a meal, that a conflict between personalities gets quietly smoothed over, that the Kunafa — essential, non-negotiable Kunafa — appears at AMP’s convention without fail. He does not do this for recognition. He does it because, for Salah, people are not a burden. They are the point.

His gift for bringing people together is perhaps his most precious quality. In a Palestinian movement that can sometimes fracture along the edges of ego and disagreement, Salah is the bridge. He moves between personalities with ease, not by avoiding hard truths, but by holding everyone with such evident care that they find their way back to each other. He does not just resolve conflicts — he dissolves them, gently and without fanfare. He expresses concern for everyone’s issues and always offers to help, no matter what is needed. The Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) said: ​“The leader of a people is their servant,” a hadith that describes Salah in every facet and engagement.

In his business life, he carries the same integrity. Salah is an honest man in the fullest sense — not merely law-abiding, but principled, a man whose word is his bond and whose reputation as a Milwaukee business owner and community leader is beyond reproach. He has spent decades hiring workers who needed a chance, supporting neighbors who needed a hand, and building advocacy organizations that gave a voice to immigrants, Palestinians, and Muslims across Wisconsin and the country.

This is the man that over ten ICE agents saw fit to surround with 12 vehicles and pull from his car on March 30^th, 2026, with no just cause. This is the man they transported out of state — first to Chicago, then to a detention center in Indiana — while his family scrambled to learn where he had been taken. Salah Sarsour, a lawful permanent resident of thirty-two years, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, a father, a grandfather, a husband — treated like a threat.

He is not a threat. He is a treasure. And we know exactly why he was targeted.

Salah grew up in the occupied West Bank, where he endured the violence, torture and humiliation of Israeli occupation as a child. He came to this country, built a family, built a business, and built a community. He spent those thirty-two years as a living rebuttal to the lie that Palestinians are anything other than human beings deserving of dignity. His abduction is not about law enforcement. It is about silencing. It is part of the same pattern we have seen with Mahmoud Khalil, with Leqaa Kordia, with Mohsen Mahdawi — a deliberate campaign to use the machinery of U.S. immigration enforcement as a weapon against Palestinian and Muslim voices at the very moment when the world is watching a genocide unfold in Gaza.

The Israeli lobby, having lost the battle for American public opinion, is now waging a different kind of battle, through the weaponization of deportation orders and a justice system that is supposed to protect everyone equally. Salah’s arrest is their message. Our response must be louder.

Palestine has been blessed with many defenders — eloquent speakers, tireless organizers, courageous advocates. But the movement also depends on people like Salah Sarsour: those who hold the community together from the inside, who make sure everyone is fed, rested, and valued, who never let anyone feel like a stranger. He is the quiet infrastructure of a decades-long struggle, and they want that infrastructure broken.

We will not let it break.

To Salah: we see you. We are fighting for you. We will not rest until you are home. And when you are — and you will be — we will find the biggest table we can, and we will sit down together, and we will eat.

And there had better be Kunafa.