Soumaya Hamdi was planning for the family holiday she would soon be taking with her husband when she received a text message that changed everything. “Is it true that Sami is being abducted?” a friend asked.She had called her husband, British-Tunisian commentator and journalist Sami Hamdi, earlier that day to check in on him, as he travelled around the United States on a speaking tour discussing Israel’s war on Gaza. When he didn’t answer, Soumaya had assumed he was at a speaking engagement.Recommended Stories list of 2 itemsend of listInstead, he had been detained by US immigration authorities, news that came as “a complete shock”, she told Al Jazeera.“That’s not the text message that I think anyone ever wants to read,” she saidIt was Sunday, October 26. Sami had been stopped at San Francisco International Airport. Unbeknownst to him, his visa had been revoked by US authorities two days earlier after a pressure campaign by anti-Muslim and pro-Israel social media influencers.The detention of the 35-year-old critic of Israel’s genocide on Gaza has sparked a legal battle, with his lawyers filing emergency petitions against his detention and his wife, British parliamentarians and UK civil society groups demanding their government take action.His case is the latest in what Muslim advocacy groups describe as a campaign to silence pro-Palestinian voices in the US through immigration enforcement.‘Bundled into a black van’Hamdi’s speaking tour was just his latest across the US – his commentary emphasising continued support for the Palestinian people has grown in popularity among America …
