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When Maher Tarabishi got a phone call from his family on January 23, he expected an update on his son’s health. Tarabishi had been held for three months at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, and his 30-year-old son Wael’s health had been on the decline. Still, Tarabishi was hoping for a full recovery.
The news, though, was not good: Wael had passed away. Maher Tarabishi was in disbelief, breaking down on the phone, according to an account of the call from his daughter-in-law Shahd Arnaout.
“He wouldn’t die without me,” Tarabishi wailed. “There is no way he died without waiting for me.”
“He wouldn’t die without me. There is no way he died without waiting for me.”
Destroyed, Tarabishi had one hope. His attorney, Ali Elhorr, had already been advocating for his release to take care of Wael, but shifted his efforts to securing a release for Wael’s funeral, which was initially scheduled for Wednesday before being moved to Thursday.
At first, ICE officials seemed like they might give in: preliminary discussion included conditions for a temporary release, including scheduling and moving Tarabishi to a detention center that was closer to the funeral home.
“Initial steps in the process had already begun when I received a call from the ICE officer with whom I had been in contact,” Elhorr said in a release. “The officer informed me that his director stepped in and told him that Maher would not be allowed to attend Wael’s burial. This was the final decision.”
ICE did not respond to inquiries from The Intercept, but told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “ICE has NOT received a formal request from anyone to attend funeral services.”
Primary Caretaker
At the time Tarabishi was arrested by ICE, he had been the primary caregiver for Wael. As he was taken, Tarabishi’s first thought was, “Who will take care of my son?” according to Arnaout’s recollection of conversations with her father-in-law.
Wael was born in Arlington, Texas, in 1995, a year after his family immigrated to the U.S. from Jordan. When the boy was 4, he had been diagnosed with Pompe disease, a rare metabolic disease that causes rapid muscular deterioration, according to his family. At the time, the doctor told the family that he might not live past 5, Arnaout said.
“Maher kept him alive,” Araout said. “Wael could not eat or drink by himself. He could not use his arms or legs. So Maher was all of that for him, his lungs, his legs, his arms, everything.”
Tarabishi, meanwhile, had applied for asylum after coming from Jordan, but he was denied. Nonetheless, he went to his regular ICE check-ins once a year for more than a decade and a half. When reports of people being arrested at these check-ins became widespread last year, his family was concerned. Tarabishi, however, was not.
“He had too much faith in the system,” Arnaout said. “He didn’t have any criminal record. He thought they put an appointment for him because they saw he is doing everything right to stay in the country, following all the rules. He never missed a single appointment.”
She said the officers at the local ICE office knew about Wael’s condition and would frequently ask Tarabishi about his son.
On January 23, the day Wael died, Elhorr had filed a motion to reopen Tarabishi’s case with the Board of Immigration Appeals. Elhorr had discovered that the purported attorney who filed Tarabishi’s original asylum application “was fraudulently practicing law without a license,” the family said in a press release.
In an earlier statement, ICE had said that Maher belonged to the “Palestine Liberation Organization” and was a “criminal alien.” While the United States has designated the PLO as a terrorist organization in the past, it is not in the country’s designated list of terrorist organizations currently. Nonetheless, the family denied that Tarabishi had any affiliation with the group.
“He has done no criminal activity,” Arnaout said. “He is an electronic engineer who loves fixing people’s laptops. He is a simple man.”
Deteriorating Conditions
In the months since Tarabishi’s arrest in October, Wael’s condition quickly deteriorated.
He was admitted to a hospital for pneumonia and sepsis in November. Connected to catheters and tubes all over his body, Wael put out a video from the hospital bed.
“The last month has been hell for me,” he says in the video. “My father was my hero, my safe place. He did everything for me 24 hours a day. And ICE took him.”
Wael ended the video with a plea: “Please release him, I am not asking for much, please release him.”
In December, Wael had to be hospitalized for a second time. Eight days before his demise, Wael went in for a surgery.
“Don’t worry, I will be back for my father,” Wael had told his family, according to Arnaout.
Wael did not wake up for the next eight days and on the night of January 22, his condition worsened drastically. The next morning, the family signed a “do not resuscitate” letter for him. Wael passed away the next day at the Methodist Mansfield Medical Center.
Tarabishi got to speak to Wael a few times from detention. The son, according to Arnaout, made light of his medical woes.
“Don’t worry,” Wael told his father, Arnaout recalled. “I am not going die until I see you. I am not going anywhere, not until I see you.”
