A newlywed Arlington woman spoke publicly for the first time Thursday after she was detained by ICE for five months while returning from her honeymoon.
Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old stateless Palestinian woman who has lived in the United States since she was 8 years old, was detained by ICE in February after boarding a flight to return home from the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Taahir Shaikh, Ward’s husband, told NBC 5 his wife was taken into custody and detained in Miami despite a pending green card application and proof of a unique circumstance.
ICE said they took Ward into custody because she had overstayed her visa and was in the country illegally and that they had a final deportation order signed by a judge more than a decade before.
The couple said that while detained in North Texas, ICE attempted to deport her to the border of Israel on June 12, but an emergency order from a federal court blocked her removal. On June 30, ICE attempted to deport her again and her attorney said agents ignored her claims about the federal order and said she was ranting. A legal intervention eventually halted the second deportation attempt, the family said.
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On Monday, Ward was released from the Alvarado detention facility and reunited with her husband.
“Humanity taught in middle school, high school, in college growing up, is not the humanity that I’ve seen,” Ward said of her time in an ICE holding facility. “I have been a law-abiding citizen since I was 8.”
Ward told part of her story Thursday, sharing that when she was taken into custody, she was handcuffed for 16 hours, moved like cattle and not provided food or water. She also said that at times during her 140 days at a holding facility, she’d been denied phone calls to her husband and lawyers and given little warning about attempts to deport her.
Because Ward is stateless, a legal claim that a person lacks legal nationality in any country and doesn’t have a country to call home, there was a question of where she would be deported.
“She’s considered stateless, which essentially just means you’re born in a country that doesn’t give you birthright citizenship. And since she was a Palestinian refugee that was born in Saudi Arabia, they weren’t recognized as Saudi nationals,” Taahir said.
Taahir said Ward was 8 when her family came to the U.S. legally on a visa. Their asylum application was denied, but without citizenship in any other country, the U.S. couldn’t deport them. Instead, they were given a supervision order and told to check in with ICE every year.
Taahir said Ward and her family met with ICE annually and that agents they dealt with commented on how fast she’d grown up, congratulated her for graduating magna cum laude and congratulated her sister on her marriage. He noted that it was the same agency that showed her humanity and allowed her to be in the country that was now trying to take that from her.
“This country has provided me with everything that I needed. I call it my home. I do not blame the country, I do not blame the people in this country … it’s unfortunate that I am in this situation, especially when I have abided and complied with every single thing that was given to me,” Ward said.
Ward said she knows firsthand what detained women are being deprived of and didn’t want to lose touch with those she met over the last five months. Her husband said they will continue fighting on behalf of those still in custody.
“The past 140 days of dehumanization, I’m not going to feel that this is a favor that they’ve released her. It is not a favor. The favor was when she came to this country and they gave her the liberty to stay and be a contributor and a model citizen to society … and she honored that favor in her work. She’s a magna cum laude grad, she has a wedding photography business, she has a home in Arlignton, Texas, with her name on it. So this is not a favor and the battle will continue,” Taahir said.
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