What will happen to these children? Children should never be made to feel
unwanted.
Palestinian children living in detention
Posted by: "Texas Prisoners Network Support"
Fri Feb 2, 2007 10:36 am (PST)
Palestinian children living in detention

Family in U.S. illegally can't stay, can't go home

January 31, 2007
By PAUL MEYER and FRANK TREJO
The Dallas Morning News
pmeyer@... and ftrejo@...

Four years ago, members of the Ibrahim family sat in a Dallas
immigration courtroom and calmly cataloged the years of violence in
their Palestinian village: the deaths of children, the bombs and
beatings. But now, denied asylum and confined for a third consecutive
month inside a pair of Texas detention centers, they just want to go
home.

Any home, in any country, will do. Even if it means returning to the
land they fled.

So far, however, Salaheddin Ibrahim, his pregnant wife, Hanan, and
four of their five children remain in a legal and geopolitical limbo.
And their plight has drawn sharp criticism from civil rights
activists and intensified debate about the decision to detain
immigrant children in a facility near Austin.

Free because she was born in the U.S., Zahra Ibrahim holds a picture
of her sisters, (from left) Rodaina, Faten and Maryam, who are in
detention along with their parents and brother. Zahra lives with her
uncle Ahmad Ibrahim in northeast Dallas. The Ibrahims were denied
asylum and ordered deported in 2003 before being apprehended at their
Richardson apartment during a November immigration raid.

But they have been unable to secure the right to cross into their
Palestinian homeland through Jordan or Israel, their attorneys say,
leaving them with no place to go. Lawyers have sent letters to 54
countries, including the Vatican, asking each to accept the family.
They have also planned a series of legal challenges, many to be filed
this week, to win their release.

"It really would be a tragedy to send the family back into such a
lawless situation, but they would rather go anywhere than be split
apart ... and detained," said New York immigration attorney Theodore
Cox, who has been retained by the family.

"Their first choice is to get out of detention. If that means going
back to the West Bank and Gaza, they'll accept it."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Carl Rusnok said
Wednesday that he could not comment specifically on the Ibrahim case
or deportation plans. The Ibrahims were among a number of "fugitive
aliens and immigration status violators" apprehended in November
raids for failure to comply with orders to leave the United States.

One family, two jails
Mr. Ibrahim is being held in a detention center in Haskell, near
Abilene. His wife and four of their children – ages 5, 8, 14 and 15 –
are in the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility near Austin, one
of two facilities in the nation dedicated to the detention of non-
Mexican immigrant families and children.

Another Ibrahim child, 3-year-old, Zahra, who was born in the U.S.
and is a citizen, is in the care of a relative in far northeast
Dallas.

Before the opening of the 512-bed Hutto facility in May 2006,
families apprehended were often released with notices to appear
before an immigration judge.

Rita Zawaideh, chairwoman of the Seattle-based Arab American
Community Coalition, says the Ibrahim case is about the fate of
hundreds of children now facing detention. The coalition is helping
fund the family's legal team, led in part by Mr. Cox, New York lawyer
Joshua Bardavid and Ralph Isenberg, a Dallas real-estate developer
who waged a high-profile battle with immigration officials last year
to keep his Chinese wife in the country.

"We are trying to do this for all children," Ms. Zawaideh said. "No
child should be arrested. No child should be imprisoned in this way.
This is the U.S.A. They are not rapists. They are not murderers. It
is morally wrong to imprison children."

Unaccompanied children, mostly from Latin America, are housed across
the country in a series of less-restrictive shelters built in recent
years under the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Minors accompanied by
families, however, now face more traditional detention settings.
Williamson County commissioners renewed the Hutto detention center
lease this week.

"It's basically to try to keep families together while at the same
time we enforce immigration laws," Mr. Rusnok said of the logic
behind the center.

Immigration officials have defended Hutto, calling it an effective
and humane way to keep families from skipping immigration hearings.
They note features like schooling with state-certified teachers and a
2,000-plus book general library.

Critics paint a starkly different picture.

"I haven't been disturbed by something this much in a very long time.
It's very disturbing to find children inside a prison," said Barbara
Hines, a veteran immigration lawyer and law professor at the
University of Texas at Austin.

Ms. Hines, who is part of a group of advocates trying to end the
detention of minors at the center, says a more humane setting should
be found.

"The legal issue to me is whether or not ... there are less-
restrictive alternatives to achieve government goals than detaining
children," she said.

Asylum sought, denied
The plight of the Ibrahims began in 2001 when the family fled the
West Bank town of Alfandaqumiya, passing through Jordan en route to
the United States on visitors' visas. There was Salaheddin, his wife,
Hanan, son Hamzeh and daughters Faten, Rodaina and Maryam. The family
filed for asylum in 2002, claiming persecution due to persistent
violence in Palestinian areas.

But immigration Judge Cary H. Copeland denied the claim in January
2003, questioning whether the harassment and discrimination detailed
by Mr. Ibrahim rose to the necessary level of persecution.

The judge ordered the Ibrahims deported, but they continued to live
in Richardson, their children attending public schools, until
November when immigration agents raided their apartment. To return to
the West Bank, they would have to pass through Jordan or Israel. The
family does not have a current Jordanian passport, and Israel
traditionally has not allowed Palestinians to return home through the
country.

"He was never on welfare. He paid his taxes for five years. He is a
good man. I'm really proud to have a brother like that," said Ahmad
Ibrahim, Salaheddin's brother.

Ahmad, who has been a U.S. citizen for 12 years, said he finds it
difficult to comprehend what has happened to his brother's family.

"To me, it's really an indecent, inhumane thing for ICE to do. It's
un-American," he said. "It's definitely criminal. Putting a 5-year-
old child in jail for three months is a crime."

He said his parents, who are still living in the West Bank, don't
understand what has happened to his brother's family.

"My mother doesn't believe they are in jail. She asks me, did they
have a car accident? Are they dead? They believe something bad
happened. But they don't believe they are in jail."

Ahmad, who has become the caretaker for Zahra, said he would be
willing to care for his brother's other four children if they were
released from custody.

On Wednesday, Zahra scurried throughout Ahmad's apartment, playing
with a cellphone and a fax machine.

When asked if she knows where her mother is, she replied: "At the
doctor."

"What country in the world jails children?" Ahmad asked. "These
children have not committed any crime; the parents have not committed
any crime. But it is like they are serving a sentence. They took them
to deport them and they can't be deported, so they are locked away."

Dallas immigration lawyer John Wheat Gibson, who represented the
family in the previous asylum proceedings, has filed to reopen their
case.

Mr. Gibson said he believes the Ibrahims' asylum claims still have
merit and have gotten stronger in the four years since Judge Copeland
denied their application. He noted that fighting had intensified in
the occupied territories, not only between Palestinians and Israelis
but also between rival Palestinian groups.

"The whole family and especially that boy, Hamzeh, are in danger if
they go back," Mr. Gibson said.

Ahmad said that at this point all the family wants to do is get out
of detention, even if it means leaving the country and returning to
their homeland.

He said he did not want the family to become involved in the
controversy surrounding the Hutto facility and whether it should be
open or not.

"I really don't care what happens to that jail," Ahmad said. "We're
simple people. We can't solve the problems of America."

Detentions defended
Mr. Isenberg said this week that he was drawn to the Ibrahim case out
of concern for the children.

"We have taken innocent children and submitted them to the worst
possible human condition, which is outlawed by the U.N. and outlawed
by 50 states in this nation," he said.

Others, however, are more supportive of ICE's decision to detain
families.

"You can't simply release people and say, 'Please come back for your
hearing in six months or a year,' " said Ira Melman, a spokesman for
the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "That just doesn't
work."

Mr. Melman said he wants the most humane facilities possible to house
children but said they should not be used as pretexts for families to
stay in the country illegally.

Children are not human shields," he said. "Just because you drag your
kid along illegally doesn't mean we can't touch you."

Ms. Zawaideh, who was born in Jordan, said she hoped the multiple
legal strategies on behalf of the Ibrahims might help other
Palestinians who are similarly suspended in a legal limbo.

In 2004, the same New York lawyers involved in the Ibrahim case
successfully won the release of Salim Yassir, a Palestinian who spent
four years in detention with no country to return to.

"Israel doesn't take Palestinians back. Jordan won't take them," Ms.
Zawaideh said. "You have a family without a country and the only
thing you can think of is keeping them locked up?"

Ahmad Ibrahim said he still is paying rent on the Richardson
apartment where his brother's family lived, hoping for the day they
return. Earlier this week he picked up mail from the apartment and
saw a letter addressed to one of the detained girls.

When he opened it he realized the girl had written a letter to
herself from detention.

"I guess that was all she could think of doing, because there's
nothing else to do there," he said. "She just wrote things like, "How
are you doing?" and "How was school today?'"

Another letter arrived recently, this one from the Richardson school
district. The letter was to inform Salaheddin that his son Hamzeh had
been absent from or tardy for classes at Berkner High School for 35
days since Aug. 14. The absences, the letter said, could make the
parents guilty of a Class C misdemeanor, "contributing to truancy."

Staff writer Dianne Solís contributed to this story.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/020
107dnmetpalfamily.3b835587.html
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