British political commentator Sami Hamdi had his visa revoked Sunday morning at the San Francisco International Airport as the Department of Homeland Security prepares to deport him.
Hamdi was detained while making his way through the domestic terminal of SFO after passing security, said Zahra Billoo, the executive director of CAIR Bay Area.
Hamdi was then taken to an immigration services facility in San Francisco before being transferred to an ICE detention facility 250 miles away in Kern County, where he is currently being held.
Hamdi’s detainment comes after he spoke Saturday night in Sacramento at a gala for the Council on American-Islamic Relations as part of a nationwide speaking tour. He was heading to speak at another CAIR event in Tampa on Sunday night.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote in an X post (opens in new tab) on Sunday that Hamdi poses a threat to national security. Hamdi has been a vocal supporter of Hamas in the war with Israel.
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“Those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country,” she said.
Hamdi’s detainment is the latest in a string of deportations of Palestinians and anti-Zionist activists from the Bay Area. In June, two Palestinian men — Awdah Hathaleen and his cousin Eid Hathaleen — were denied entry at SFO and sent to Qatar. Awdah Hathaleen was killed in the West Bank weeks later (opens in new tab), allegedly by an Israeli settler.
On Sunday, within minutes after the DHS announcement about Hamdi, one of MAGA’s biggest cheerleaders, Laura Loomer, took to Twitter to celebrate the occasion.
“He’s a jihadi,” she wrote (opens in new tab). “You’re lucky his only fate is being arrested and deported.”
Loomer said Hamdi had become a target of the Trump administration following an investigation by RAIR International, an activist organization with the stated goal of providing “a window into the deleterious effects of Communism and Islamic Supremacy on Civilization.” RAIR concluded (opens in new tab) that Hamdi is involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Sunni Islamist organization, and is on “U.S. soil to expand a foreign political network hostile to American interests.”
Among their findings was that Hamdi had encouraged Muslims to “celebrate the victory” of Oct. 7, days after the attacks.
“When you got the news that it happened, how many of you felt the euphoria?” he said (opens in new tab).
CAIR condemned the detention, calling it a “blatant affront to free speech.”
“Our concern is that his only ‘crime’ is consistently speaking out against the genocide in Gaza and U.S. complicity,” Billoo of CAIR said Monday. “Our most urgent demand is that he be released.”
Hamdi’s father, Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi, weighed in on Twitter Monday morning by condemning his son’s detainment as “deeply unfair” and saying that his son’s reputation is being attacked.
“Sami is not an extremist,” he wrote in an X post Monday morning, “he’s a journalist and political analyst who stands for dialogue, respect, and human dignity.”
On Sunday afternoon, Shaun Maguire, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia and an outspoken supporter of Israel, alleged that Hamdi had targeted him personally in an attempt to get him fired.
“[Hamdi] directed people to use AI to auto generate unique emails to send to our LPs,” Maguire wrote on X (opens in new tab). “There are jihadists in America whose full time job is to silence us.”
SFO officials declined to comment.