Federal authorities are deporting a Muslim leader from Dallas with alleged terrorist connections back to Jordan.
ICE arrested 54-year-old Marwan Marouf, director of public relations and fundraising for the Muslim American Society (MAS) of Dallas-Fort Worth, an ICE spokesperson told The Dallas Express.
Federal officials will now deport him to Jordan, where he holds citizenship.
Marouf was charged with lack of a valid entry document, solicitation of funds for a Tier III undesignated terrorist organization, and “material support” of terrorism, according to his lawyers at Muslim Legal Fund of America.
The ICE spokeswoman said Marouf is an “illegal alien from Jordan,” who entered America in Dallas on June 5, 2009. He had a non-immigrant visa at the time, allowing him to remain in the country until February 12, 2011.
“Marouf failed to depart the U.S. as agreed on the conditions of his admission,” she said. “He has been living in the U.S. illegally for over a decade.”
ICE-Dallas arrested him on September 22, processed him, and served him a notice to appear before an immigration judge, according to the spokeswoman.
“ICE is executing its mission of identifying and removing criminal aliens and others who have violated our nation’s immigration laws,” per the spokesperson. “All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention, and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, regardless of nationality.”
During his immigration trial, Marouf requested voluntary departure, according to KERA. Judge Abdias Tida denied this, citing past donations he made to the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation.
Marouf’s lawyers claimed none of the charges applied.
“DHS is trying to alchemize a terror case out of thin air – no charge, no conviction, no contemporaneous evidence – just retroactive labels and innuendo,” said Attorney Hassan Ahmad in the release. “They point to 1990s charitable activity, a post-PATRIOT Act legal framework, and post-2001 designations, then pretend that equals ‘terrorism.’ It doesn’t.”
Terrorist Ties
Marouf allegedly made donations to the Holy Land Foundation, a Richardson nonprofit designated a terrorist organization and convicted in 2008 for acting as a front group for Hamas. The group was the largest American Muslim charity until the government shut it down in 2001.
“From its inception, HLF existed to support Hamas,” reads a Department of Justice press release from the time.
Marouf is also the brother-in-law of the Elashi family, convicted in 2004 for doing business with a Hamas terrorist through the computer and internet company Infocom. Years later, in 2008, Marouf’s in-law, Ghassan Elashi, was also convicted in the Holy Land Foundation trial.
The Council on American Islamic Relations, which has numerous links to terrorists, called for Marouf’s release soon after his arrest in September.
CAIR Texas Executive Director Mustafaa Carroll called Marouf a “pillar of the community.”
Marouf is also an active leader in the MAS-DFW. In 2008, federal prosecutors alleged that MAS was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.”
Gov. Greg Abbott designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations on November 18, as The Dallas Express reported. The Muslim Brotherhood is linked to violence across the globe through terrorist offshoots like Hamas.
Backlash
After Marouf’s arrest, Imam Omar Suleiman – founder of the Irving-based Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research – called him “the heart of our community.”
“ICE abducted him after he dropped his kid off at school yesterday,” Suleiman posted on X. “You better believe we’re going to fight for him with everything we’ve got, because that’s what he’d do for every one of us.”
That night, Suleiman also headlined a rally for Marouf at MAS-DFW, according to the Islam watchdog Rise Align Ignite Reclaim Foundation.
Suleiman reportedly urged the crowd to treat Marouf as a “political prisoner,” to “follow the instructions of the legal team,” and to apply political pressure. He invoked the Holy Land Foundation trial, claiming anti-Muslim persecution.
Speakers also included Senior Imam Ustadh Mohamad Baajour of the East Plano Islamic Center. As The Dallas Express reported, EPIC is under investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton for its planned “EPIC City” development near Josephine.
During the rally, Baajour called Marouf’s arrest a divine “test,” promising his arrest was decreed by Allah – and that he would soon return, according to RAIR.
A Radical Movement
Muslim Brotherhood adherents first arrived in America in the 1960s, fleeing government crackdowns – and soon “recognized that American social and political liberties would enable them to easily spread their Islamist ideology,” according to the Hudson Institute.
The movement’s followers, with then-Muslim Brotherhood Head Mohamed Akef, founded MAS in 1993 as the organization’s de facto branch in America.
Today, however, MAS claims “no affiliation” with the Muslim Brotherhood or any other international organization. It said the movement arose to resist “dictatorial regimes,” and attracted a broad coalition of activists.
“Many of these activists who traveled to the United States as students and continued to have activist inclinations here, not surprisingly, played a role in establishing organizations,” the group’s website reads. “Many immigrant organizations that were established early on would likely have had some founders who formerly had some involvement or even membership in the Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood].”
MAS claims it was founded to declare an “American Muslim agenda,” aiming to “organize and integrate Muslims to be a contributing part of American society.”
“The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] is a very broad, diverse movement, present in many countries, with various leanings that cannot be painted with one broad brush,” the group’s website reads. “Several notable academics and politicians presently advocate engaging in different ways with the Ikhwan, as well as other potential proponents of peaceful, grassroots, popular opposition to authoritarian regimes.”
The Muslim Brotherhood has several other global splinter groups, including Hamas, HASM, and Liwa al-Thawra, which have been designated terrorist groups by the State Department, as The Dallas Express previously reported. Governments of countries including Austria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have limited or banned the Brotherhood’s activities.
The Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Badie, is currently serving a life sentence for plotting an armed insurrection in Egypt.
Badie reportedly described the group’s goal as establishing Islamic “mastership of the world.”
Islamic Influence Across DFW
Radical Islam has been expanding across the Dallas area for years, even after the Holy Land Foundation trial.
Two Islamic terrorists, who pledged allegiance to ISIS, attacked the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland in 2015 for hosting a Muhammad drawing contest. They opened fire at a police checkpoint outside the event, where a police officer shot and killed them in their tracks.
Years later, in 2021, EPIC hosted events with CAIR-Texas to support Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman charged with shooting at American soldiers. In August 2024, CAIR CEO Nihad Awad also spoke to EPIC mosque congregants, laying out a wide-ranging plan to reshape American politics in the model of Islam.
EPIC has also been planning a massive Islamic city near Josephine, called EPIC City – renamed this month to “The Meadow” amid public concerns over Sharia law, as The Dallas Express reported. In October, Paxton began exploring legal action against the project’s developers.