Feds detain two Palestinian visitors at SFO who arrived for humanitarian mission
San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood told the Chronicle early Thursday morning that there was an 'urgent situation unfolding' at the airport after police detained the two men, who were scheduled to speak at a series of Bay Area interfaith events.
Protesters were already expected to swarm SFO to support the two men, whose identities are being withheld to protect their safety.
The two men, residents of a Bedouin village on the West Bank, were invited by local faith communities, including the Kehilla Community Synagogue and the Buena Vista and Los Altos United Methodist Churches, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
One of the men is an artist and photographer. The other is a teacher. Both are parents. Phillip Weintraub, a lead organizer of the Kehilla Community Synagogue's partnership with the men's village, said both men were not connected to any Palestinian political organizations and were committed to nonviolence. One had met previously with congressional representatives, including the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Weintraub said.
The two activists had speaking engagements in Alameda, Santa Clara, Oakland and other Bay Area cities.
'They had valid visas but were invalidated on entry without cause,' Mahmood said in a text. 'I am here with their Jewish sponsors, whose synagogue they were here to speak at tomorrow.'
Mahmood said in a social media post that the two activists have been held at the airport since 1 p.m. Wednesday and were prepared to send them back on a plane to the Middle East.
Bay Area faith leaders demanded that the two men be released immediately and for the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to 'stop targeting Palestinian travelers' and uphold the right to free speech and 'peaceful interfaith exchange.'
Weintraub said his community has had a relationship with the men for three years as part of an interfaith 'reparative alliance' envisioned as connecting American Jews, Israelis and Palestianians to promote non-violence in Israel and Palestine.
'They're known, wonderful folks,' Weintraub said. 'Coming over to connect, promote interfaith connection between Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities. They're trying to survive and live in peace.'
Weintraub said he arrived at the airport after 1 p.m. yesterday to pick them up for a flight from Doha, but they never showed up. He received a call from a Customs and Border Protection agent that night saying, 'they will not be entering the United States,' he said.
This is a developing story. Check sfchronicle.com for updates.
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After that, Lee expanded his outlaw growing operation and developed a steady customer at the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative. Rather than take the risk of moving the product across state lines, he moved himself to Oakland in 1997, to join in the growing number of marijuana-related businesses that formed Oaksterdam. In 1999, he opened Bulldog Coffee Shop, which operated on the Amsterdam model of selling coffee in front and cannabis in back. He also started an illicit growing operation, which he called Richard Lee Farms, in a warehouse with hydroponics and grow lights. 'What he was doing was forming a community and an industry,' said his brother. 'He didn't want to be in the shadows, in a black market. He wanted to grow it out in the open, fully engaged in society.' In 2003, Lee opened a second coffee house/dispensary called Coffeeshop Blue Sky. With its proceeds he funded the Oakland Civil Liberties Alliance, a PAC he formed to lobby for passage of Measure Z, an Oakland proposition that made enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest priority for law enforcement. It was approved by voters in 2004. Lee also became publisher of Oaksterdam News, a newsletter that came out quarterly from 2005 to 2007. All of these operations were small compared to Oaksterdam U, a for-profit institution that grew to occupy 40,000 square feet at 1600 Broadway. Lee entered statewide politics as the main industry proponent of California Proposition 19, the first attempt in the U.S. to legalize marijuana for adults, in 2010. It failed but led to the passage of state Senate Bill 1449, which reduced possession of up to an ounce of non-medical marijuana from a criminal misdemeanor to an infraction. Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed it into law effective Jan. 1, 2011. Lee later said his activism at the forefront of the drive to decriminalize marijuana is what led to the raid on his home and his business by a combined force representing the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Marshals Service, on April 2, 2012. School computers, laptops and student records amounting to 85 boxes were confiscated and not returned until a year later. Lee's personal and business bank accounts were seized. 'They broke him, at that point,' said Jones, who replaced him as the head of Oaksterdam. 'They separated him from his business and purpose. The feds did what they wanted to do, they shut him up and they shut him down.' Bulldog Coffee Shop closed before the raid and Coffeeshop Blue Sky closed immediately after. The university was wobbly, too, and ended up moving to a smaller campus on Telegraph Avenue and made a comeback without Lee, as a not for profit educational and training institution, with an online component. His last major act was to enlist his parents, conservative Christians, who co-founded Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition (RAMP) as a lobbying group intent on reducing or eliminating marijuana laws nationwide. There are also more than 100,000 Oaksterdam graduates carrying on the mission of legalizing marijuana in the U.S. and freeing 40,000 people who are in jails and prisons under marijuana convictions. Some 200,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession in 2023, according to data released by the FBI and cited by the Last Prisoner Project. "While the war isn't over," he said, on the day he retired, in 2012 "we have an army to fight it with."
