Palestinian Speakers on a Flight Back to Jordan, After Feds Detain Them at SFO

Updated 11:30 a.m. Monday

Denied entry, detained overnight and eventually sent back home: Two Palestinians from the West Bank, planning to attend a series of speaking events with Jewish synagogues and other places of worship in the Bay Area, as part of an interfaith humanitarian mission, instead found themselves tangled in an immigration system being sharply restricted by President Donald Trump.

The visitors’ sponsor, Philip Weintraub, of East Bay’s Kehilla Community Synagogue, confirmed to KQED that the two men were sent back home Thursday from San Francisco International Airport. 

“I am beyond heartbroken for my friends, our friends, who were trying to come here just for a humanitarian purpose — to thank us, to connect with us,” Weintraub said, standing in SFO’s international arrivals hall. “They were treated so cruelly.”

According to Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who rushed to the airport on Wednesday and remained there overnight, the two men were invited to the U.S. by multiple faith organizations that have provided aid in their village, Masafer Yatta, in the occupied West Bank.

The men, who are cousins, have been coordinating relief efforts for their 200-person village and documenting the effects of decades-long Israeli occupation, according to Ben Linder, a member of the executive committee of J Street Silicon Valley, an organization that says it is pro-Israel and “working for Israeli-Palestinian peace,” and was set to host an event they planned to attend in the South Bay Thursday.

“After an interview by CBP, the individuals failed to establish they were admissible to the U.S.,” a CBP spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “As such, they withdrew their applications for admission and departed the U.S.”

Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Bay Area chapter, said the incident raised in her mind the specter of the new travel ban, which bars foreign nationals from more than a dozen countries from entering the U.S., based on their national origin — as well as recent escalations in immigration enforcement taking place across the state and country.

“At a time when the administration has shown a complete disregard for the rule of law as well as any decision-making by our courts, we need to be prepared that this will happen more frequently,” Billoo said.

Mahmood called the detention “an escalating indication of the constitutional crisis that we are facing in our country right now,” speaking outside the airport Thursday morning.

“Where even people on valid tourist visas, people who are here on interfaith missions and humanitarian causes, can be denied entry and [have] their voice be silenced,” he continued.

A crowd of about 36 protesters gathered at the airport Thursday, ringing bells and chanting, “Let them go — no deportation.” Some wore keffiyehs, a traditional Middle Eastern scarf that has become symbolic of Palestinians, and held signs like, “SF Welcomes Palestinian Speakers.”

Mahmood said that he and Weintraub, who leads the Jewish-Palestinian Reparations Alliance at Kehilla, first learned that the men had been detained from the San Francisco Public Defender’s office, after not hearing from them several hours after their flight from Doha, Qatar, was expected to land.

“The reaction is [that] they’re deeply disappointed and outraged,” said Weintraub, who had been at the airport since Wednesday afternoon and was able to speak with the men once that evening. “That’s such a ridiculous decision, having no basis in reality. These are folks trying to share their village’s story and to thank us for supporting them and showing solidarity.”

The two men are Palestinian passport holders, reported the San Francisco Chronicle, which have long been recognized as travel documents by U.S. officials, though not as proof of citizenship.  The U.S. does not recognize the Palestinian Authority, a governing body in the part of the Palestinian territories where the men are from, as a government, nor the territories as a state.

Masafer Yatta, the village where the men are from, was recently depicted in “No Other Land,” the Best Documentary Oscar winner in 2025, which captured clashes between residents and Israeli settlers.

Linder said the men were told they would be deported back to the West Bank, likely through Jordan, on Thursday. They were not given a reason for their revoked visas, he said, which sets a “terrible precedent.”

“People with valid tourist visas to the United States that can be arbitrarily denied entry because of their skin color, because of their last name … their Palestinian peoplehood, that is a huge precedent that may be very dangerous for anyone that doesn’t look like the current [Make America Great Again] regime,” he said.

KQED’s Juan Carlos Lara and Elize Manoukian contributed to this report. 

June 13: A previous version of this story named the two Palestinian men who were sent back home. Their names were removed after concerns were raised for their safety.