Sami Hamdi, a British political commentator and pro-Palestinian activist, will voluntarily leave the United States two weeks after being detained by federal immigration authorities for deportation, his family said on Monday.
Hamdi was in Sacramento as part of a speaking tour organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy group.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested him at San Francisco International Airport on the morning of Oct. 26, a day after he spoke at CAIR Sacramento’s annual gala and hours before he was scheduled to address another CAIR event in Florida.
Hamdi’s father, Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi, said a California immigration court has allowed his son to voluntarily return to the United Kingdom rather than face formal deportation….