Ward Sakeik, an Arlington woman of Palestinian descent detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while returning from her honeymoon, spoke publicly Thursday for the first time since her release — telling reporters the government attempted to deport her to Israel despite already being in the process of getting her green card.
ICE agents detained Sakeik, a 22-year-old wedding photographer, at a Miami airport in February upon her and her husband’s return from the U.S. Virgin Islands. Her husband is a U.S. citizen.
Joined by her spouse and attorneys at a hotel in Irving, Sakeik spoke Thursday about the five months she’s spent in ICE detention.
“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 a crowd of reporters and community members. “It was the humanity that was stripped away from me.”
Sakeik was born in Saudi Arabia to a Palestinian refugee family that came to the country in 2011 on a tourist visa. Her family sought asylum, but according to the Department of Homeland Security, Sakeik overstayed her visa and had a final order of removal from an immigration judge.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t grant birthright citizenship and Palestinians there face unique obstacles to obtaining legal status, so Sakeik is considered stateless. Her attorneys said when ICE wasn’t able to feasibly deport Sakeik and her family, they entered an agreement with immigration officials in 2015, allowing the family to stay in the country under supervision.
Conditions of that agreement — which Sakeik said she’s always complied with — included regular check-ins with the ICE office in Dallas. She also obtained a work authorization order.
After arriving at a Miami airport, Sakeik said she was handcuffed for 16 hours without any food or water on the bus to a detention center in Florida. She was frequently denied the opportunity to call her husband or attorney, she said.
Women were sometimes denied their medication, Sakeik said. She also spoke to the dirty and sometimes overcrowded conditions at El Valle Detention Facility near McAllen and Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, about 40 miles southwest of Dallas.
“I did lose five months of my life because I was criminalized for being stateless,” she said. “Something that I absolutely have no control over. I didn't choose to be stateless, I didn't do a crime that made me stateless. I had no choice.”
Sakeik’s attorneys said they weren’t told exactly why she was released.
In a statement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Sakeik’s detention was not part of a targeted operation by ICE. Sakeik flew over international waters and outside the U.S. Customs zone and was flagged by Customs and Border Patrol while trying to reenter the continental U.S.
“Following her American husband and her filing the appropriate legal applications for her to remain in the country and become a legal permanent resident, she was released from ICE custody,” the statement reads.
But Sakeik and her attorneys say that’s not true. ICE attempted to deport her to the Israel border twice, they said: on June 12 and June 30. An attorney for Sakeik said her I-130 form — the first step in getting a green card for someone without legal status who’s married to a U.S. citizen — was approved on June 27.
“They did not release her because of an approved I-130,” Sakeik’s attorney Maria Kari said. “They in fact tried to deport her after finding out about that I-130. And we shared that with the government, that it had been approved. And they still moved to act unlawfully.”
In response to the DHS assertion that she was flagged for traveling over international waters, KERA News asked the agency spokesperson whether it’s the department’s position that any flight over international territory can trigger being flagged by CBP. That could include domestic flights to Hawaii and Alaska, or domestic flights in the lower 48 states that cross into Canada.
DHS did not answer that or other questions about Sakeik’s case, and referred KERA News to the same statement from McLaughlin.
Sakeik’s immigration case is still pending, and her attorneys expect it to continue as normal. In the meantime, Sakeik said she plans to continue advocating for the women in immigration detention she became friends with — including Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman from New Jersey who was detained nearly a year after attending a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University.
“They're mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, they're superheroes,” Sakeik said. “They are humans and their lives hold values and I will continue to fight for them every single step of the way.”
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