ICE Detains British Commentator Sami Hamdi Ahead of CAIR Gala

ICE has detained con­tro­ver­sial British com­men­ta­tor Sami Ham­di at San Fran­cis­co Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, revok­ing his visa and plac­ing him in fed­er­al cus­tody pend­ing depor­ta­tion. On 27 Octo­ber 2025, CNN report­ed that the US Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE) had detained Ham­di dur­ing a speak­ing tour, with offi­cials alleg­ing he “sup­ports ter­ror­ism,” a claim sup­port­ers deny. The deten­tion occurred after Ham­di spoke at a Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) gala in Sacra­men­to on Sat­ur­day and was sched­uled to address anoth­er CAIR event in Flori­da.​ The arti­cle begins:

British com­men­ta­tor Sami Ham­di was detained on Sun­day by fed­er­al immi­gra­tion offi­cers dur­ing a speak­ing tour in the Unit­ed States, in what a Mus­lim advo­ca­cy group said was retal­i­a­tion for his crit­i­cism of Israel. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion said its deci­sion to detain Ham­di and revoke his visa under­scores that the US has no oblig­a­tion to host for­eign­ers “who sup­port ter­ror­ism and active­ly under­mine the safe­ty of Amer­i­cans.” But the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) has called Hamdi’s treat­ment a “bla­tant affront to free speech” and called for his release. Ham­di is a jour­nal­ist and com­men­ta­tor who appears on British TV net­works to ana­lyze devel­op­ments in the Mid­dle East. Recent­ly, he has spo­ken about the US-bro­kered cease­fire in Gaza and inter­na­tion­al plans for the post-war gov­er­nance of the enclave. Based in Lon­don, Ham­di also writes about UK for­eign pol­i­cy and domes­tic pol­i­tics. Accord­ing to his social media, Ham­di reg­u­lar­ly goes on speak­ing tours and has recent­ly trav­eled to Malaysia, Turkey and South Africa, as well as the US. Accord­ing to Hamdi’s LinkedIn page, he is the man­ag­ing direc­tor and edi­tor-in-chief of Inter­na­tion­al Inter­est, an orga­ni­za­tion which “advis­es on polit­i­cal envi­ron­ments across the globe.”

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/27/uk/sami-hamdi-detained-ice-intl

Key Points

• The Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty con­firmed Hamdi’s visa was revoked and he remains in ICE cus­tody pend­ing removal from the Unit­ed States.
• Con­ser­v­a­tive activist Lau­ra Loomer pub­licly claimed cred­it for Hamdi’s deten­tion, call­ing him an indi­vid­ual with Islam­ic ter­ror ties and Hamas supporter.
• CAIR con­demned the arrest as a bla­tant vio­la­tion of free speech and accused author­i­ties of abduct­ing crit­ics of Israeli gov­ern­ment policy.
• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has pur­sued increased immi­gra­tion enforce­ment tar­get­ing for­eign nation­als who crit­i­cize Israel’s mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Gaza.

CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood: A History of Controversies and Connections

The Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) was found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pales­tine, which formed part of the US Hamas infra­struc­ture, with doc­u­ments from the Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror­ism tri­al con­firm­ing that CAIR founders and cur­rent lead­ers were part of the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and that CAIR itself is part of the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The orga­ni­za­tion describes itself as Amer­i­ca’s largest Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties group and advo­cates for Mus­lim civ­il rights, but in 2009 a US fed­er­al judge ruled that the gov­ern­ment had pro­duced ample evi­dence estab­lish­ing CAIR’s asso­ci­a­tions with the Holy Land Foun­da­tion, the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pales­tine, and Hamas. The orga­ni­za­tion is led by Nihad Awad, one of three orig­i­nal founders, who in Decem­ber 2023 stat­ed he was hap­py to see Pales­tini­ans break out of Gaza on Octo­ber 7, prompt­ing the Biden White House to dis­avow CAIR after the Hamas attack killed approx­i­mate­ly 1,200 peo­ple and result­ed in 240 hostages.

CAIR has faced mul­ti­ple con­tro­ver­sies regard­ing for­eign fund­ing and finan­cial trans­paren­cy, with the orga­ni­za­tion set­tling a law­suit in Feb­ru­ary 2025 rather than dis­close for­eign fund­ing sources, though a Novem­ber 2024 court rul­ing had pre­vi­ous­ly ordered CAIR to reveal donors after its defama­tion law­suit back­fired. The Cal­i­for­nia chap­ter was accused of mis­us­ing $7 mil­lion in tax­pay­er funds allo­cat­ed for refugee reset­tle­ment, with evi­dence sug­gest­ing CAIR-Cal­i­for­nia used fed­er­al grants to fund gen­er­al oper­a­tions rather than refugee ser­vices as intend­ed. In 2014, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates des­ig­nat­ed CAIR as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, claim­ing ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a des­ig­na­tion CAIR called shock­ing and bizarre though the UAE reject­ed crit­i­cism, say­ing West­ern orga­ni­za­tions linked to the Broth­er­hood worked on incite­ment and cre­at­ing envi­ron­ments of extrem­ism. CAIR exec­u­tive direc­tor Nihad Awad attend­ed a Doha meet­ing of inter­na­tion­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers in June 2022, rein­forc­ing doc­u­ment­ed con­nec­tions between CAIR lead­er­ship and Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood networks.

The orga­ni­za­tion has con­sis­tent­ly defend­ed aca­d­e­mics fac­ing con­tro­ver­sy over pro-Hamas state­ments, includ­ing George­town Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jonathan Brown after posts call­ing for strikes on US troops led to his dis­missal, with CAIR main­tain­ing ties to George­town’s Alwaleed Cen­ter for Mus­lim-Chris­t­ian Under­stand­ing which has long­stand­ing con­nec­tions to Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-linked fig­ures and has been crit­i­cized for accept­ing sub­stan­tial Sau­di fund­ing with­out prop­er dis­clo­sure. CAIR New York board mem­ber Lamis Deek advo­cat­ed a war of lib­er­a­tion against Israel in June 2022. The orga­ni­za­tion con­demned US mil­i­tary action against Iran in June 2025, call­ing Amer­i­can strikes “ille­gal” and demand­ing account­abil­i­ty for what it termed war crimes, while also wel­com­ing the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion’s deci­sion to end part­ner­ship with the Anti-Defama­tion League in July 2025. CAIR par­tic­i­pat­ed in Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood coali­tion efforts, join­ing calls to end online Islam­o­pho­bia in March 2025 along­side inter­na­tion­al Broth­er­hood-linked orga­ni­za­tions. At a Novem­ber 2024 Mass­a­chu­setts awards ban­quet, US Con­gress­woman and activist Lin­da Sar­sour ral­lied sup­port for CAIR, demon­strat­ing the orga­ni­za­tion’s deep polit­i­cal connections.

Exter­nal references:

• The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Amer­i­ca: The Dynam­ics of a Movement

• The Hamas Net­works in Amer­i­ca: A Short History

• Con­gres­sion­al Record: Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Relations

Dis­claimer:

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.