Ward Sakeik was preparing to step on a plane with her new husband Taahir Shaikh after honeymooning in the U.S. Virgin Islands when federal agents pulled her aside at the airport.
Sakeik, who is Palestinian but legally stateless despite living in the United States since she was eight years old, was then handcuffed on a plane on the way to Miami on February 11. She had married her husband Taahir Shaikh, a U.S. citizen, just 10 days earlier.
The 22-year-old was detained in Florida for three weeks before being transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Texas.
On July 2, after nearly five months in custody, Shaikh picked her up from the Prairieland Detention Center and returned to their home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
In the months between, Donald Trump’s administration had tried to deport her — twice — and threatened to send her to Israel’s border as Israeli rockets were raining down on Iran. A federal judge had intervened and blocked the government from doing so.
“The humanity that I was taught in middle school, elementary, high school and college, growing up, is not the humanity that I’ve seen,” Sakeik told reporters on Thursday. “It was the humanity that was stripped away from me.”
Sakeik was born to Palestinian refugees in Saudi Arabia, a country that does not grant citizenship by birth. Her family sought asylum in the United States in 2011 after entering on tourist visas.
That petition was denied, though because no other country would accept them, they were granted legal permission to remain in the United States under an “order of supervision” that allowed people with final deportation orders to continue to legally live and work in the United States as long as they check in regularly with immigration officials.
The family complied with “every single thing that was thrown at us,” Sakeik told reporters Thursday.
“I have been a law-abiding resident of the United States since I was eight years old,” she said. “I did lose five months of my life because I was criminalized for being stateless, something I have absolutely no control over.”
Three years ago, she met Shaikh, and the couple married in February.
On June 12, ICE officers brought her to the tarmac at Fort Worth Alliance Airport and told her she was being deported to “the border of Israel,” despite the government’s awareness that she is legally stateless, with no path to citizenship available in Israel or in the West Bank.
That removal attempt was derailed as Israel and Iran exchanged rocket fire.
On June 22, District Judge Ed Kinkeade blocked the government from deporting her or removing her from the Texas district where she was being held while her legal challenge against her arrest and removal played out.
But at roughly 5 a.m. June 30, agents woke the 22-year-old and told her to pack her things and prepare to leave the facility immediately, according to her attorneys. An officer told her legal team she was being deported, but would not say where, they said.
She called her husband and legal team in a panic as they tried to get the attention of ICE and federal prosecutors. She was sent back to her dorm at the detention center two hours later.
Two days later, she was set free.
Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed she was released due to the couple filing “appropriate legal applications,” but her attorneys dispute that account.
Shaikh had filed an I-130 petition — which begins a sponsorship process for a citizen spouse to receive a green card — days after they were married in February. That petition was approved on June 27, three days before federal agents told her to pack her things.
“The Trump administration’s brazenly unconstitutional attempt to deport this young woman in violation of a federal court order should shock the conscience of every American,” her attorney Eric Lee said in a statement.
“Had we not intervened, she may very well be in a foreign country right now, separated from her family like so many others illegally deported to third countries,” Lee added. “As the Supreme Court sits on its hands and lets this happen, the American people must stand up and oppose Trump’s descent to dictatorship.”
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee legal director Chris Godshall-Bennett called the administration’s immigration agenda “depraved.”
“Let’s be clear: Ward was arrested and almost deported simply because she is Palestinian and ICE thought they could get away with it,” he said. “The new American secret police are out of control, but the fault lies with generations of legislators who have happily demonized immigrants in their race to the fascistic bottom.”
