ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis woman has been reunited with her family after spending three days in Israeli custody.
Video shows Hala Salameh, a 22-year-old dental student at St. Louis Community College, reuniting with her mother, sister and other family members in a tearful embrace in the West Bank after an Israeli judge cleared her release. The terms of her release are not yet known.
Salameh, an American citizen with dual Palestinian citizenship, was arrested and jailed while she was traveling with her family to visit holy sites in Jerusalem. She was denied entry at a checkpoint last Friday, throwing her plans to return home this week into jeopardy.
According to her family, Salameh had all the proper documentation, including a special travel permit allowing entry into religious sites, but was still turned away at the checkpoint where visitors went through a physical inspection.
"She got pretty upset," her younger sister Yumna Salameh told 5 On Your Side. "They were they were yelling at her."
After being rejected at the initial checkpoint twice, Salameh was separated from the rest of her family and tried to enter through another route in a taxi cab.
"There's another checkpoint about 10 minutes away where it's just cars, and people just get in cars and you can ride through the checkpoint," her younger sister said.
That's when Israeli Defense Forces took her into custody. Her family says while she did have all of her required documentation, she did not have those papers on her person when she was ultimately arrested.
Advocates with the American Muslims for Palestine in Missouri and Washington lobbied the State Department to intervene in her release, and said they "absolutely" want the State Department to declare her arrest an unjust detention.
The State Department on Sunday acknowledged it was aware of the detention of an American citizen, and said her safety was its top priority, but gave no further comment on the nature of the detention.
The local and national chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) highlighted Salameh's arrest as an example of what the consider ongoing discrimination against Palestinian Americans at border checkpoints and called for the Biden administration to deny Israel entry into the U.S. visa waiver program until the country eases travel restrictions on Palestinians with dual American citizenship.
“Unfortunately, this discriminatory treatment has not been adequately addressed by our nation, which has a duty to protect the American people from racist harassment while traveling," CAIR-Missouri Board Chair Yasir Ali said in a statement.
Twenty progressive members of Congress signed a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month urging American diplomats to review Israel's treatment of American citizens at Israeli checkpoints as it considers granting entry into the visa waiver program.
"Unfortunately, Israel has consistently refused to extend fair treatment to U.S. visitors attempting to travel through Israel-controlled entry points," Congressman Don Beyer (D-California) wrote.
Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Missouri) did not sign the letter, but her office says she was involved in monitoring Salameh's situation.
“I was very concerned when I learned about the detainment of Hala, my constituent and member of our St. Louis community," Rep. Bush said in a statement. "I find her detainment to be even more troubling considering the fundamentally unjust discrimination that Palestinians, including Palestinian-Americans, routinely endure at the hands of the Israeli government. My team and I have been in ongoing communication with Hala’s family. We are so relieved that she has been released and look forward to giving her a warm welcome back to St. Louis.”
Bush signed onto a previous letter to the State Department in June expressing "deep concern regarding continuing reports of discriminatory treatment of American passport holders by the Government of Israel."
The letter called the new travel restrictions "clearly ethnically-based discrimination."