A Syrian American man is among members of the Druze community killed in sectarian clashes in Syria
The U.S. State Department confirmed the death of U.S citizen Hossam Soraya in the city of Sweida and extended its condolences to his family. His relatives and friends told The Associated Press that Saraya, in his mid-30s from Oklahoma, was killed in an attack last Wednesday.
The violence in Sweida provice, where the city of Sweida is the provincial capital, erupted earlier this month between the Druze community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and the local Sunni Bedouin tribes, drawing in Syrian government forces, which effectively sided with the Bedouins.
Hundreds of people were killed — both civilians and combatants — before a ceasefire calmed the fighting, only for clashes to restart days later. The U.N. International Organization for Migration said more than 130,000 people were displaced during the fighting.
The fighting threatened Syria's fragile transition and underscored the difficulties the new government faces as it tries to consolidate control over the country, months after Islamist-led insurgents ousted longtime autocrat Bashar Assad last December. Neighboring Israel also intervened, striking Syrian forces — actions Israel said was in defense of the Druze, who are also a significant minority in Israel.
A raid by gunmen in military uniform
The clashes started as a series of tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and Druze militias. Government forces intervened to stop the hostilities but effectively sided with the Bedouins.
On Wednesday, Soraya was abducted with his brother Karim, their father Ghassan and three other relatives from the family home by gunmen who later shot and killed them in a square in Sweida, his friends and relatives said, speaking on condition of anonymity fearing reprisals.
The gunmen told them they were government forces and assured the women nothing would happen to their men as they took them away, one of Soraya's friends said. The gunmen returned later and threatened the women and children, before leaving without harming them but taking off with gold and other valuables from the house, the friend said.
They said they believe government forces were behind the killings but did not elaborate.
The Syrian Defense Ministry says Tuesday it was investigating 'shocking and serious violations committed by an unknown group wearing military uniforms' in Sweida, without giving further details. The ministry did not specifically mention Saraya's killing.
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said on Monday he was heartbroken over Saraya's killing.
'We are praying for his family, friends, and the entire community as they grieve this senseless loss.' Lankford said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Fellow Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin meanwhile said that he is working with 'partners in the region to learn more.'
Trying to reach the family
After new of the violence broke out, Saraya's relatives in America could not get a hold of him and other male family members in the Druze-majority city. They were told by remaining relatives in Sweida of the raid and that Saraya and the others were taken away by gunmen.
Then, to their horror, they recognized Hossam and the other men from the family in a video posted on social media showing gunmen in military uniform sprayed their relatives with automatic fire as tehy were kneeling on the asphalt in a Sweida roundabout.
Another video that surfaced later, shows their relatives being marched off by at least 10 armed men in military uniform, chatting among themselves, smiling and posing for the camera.
A life in America
Although Hossam had been living in the United States since 2014, he remained engaged in the community back home in Syria.
He and his brother co-founded an online school named after their family for Syrians abroad interested in completing their education with their native country's curriculum, with millions scattered around the world after the almost 14-year civil war that erupted in 2011 and ended with Assad's ouster.
On the school's social media page, Syrians and Oklahomans paid tribute to Hossam and his family after their deaths were announced.
More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
Most Druze in Syria have supported a more diplomatic approach with the new government in Damascus but the clashes in Sweida have left many doubtful of a peaceful coexistence the new leaders in the post-Assad era.
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Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.
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But before long he got into trouble, drawing a 1998 conviction for possessing meth and carrying a concealed gun without a permit. He was released on probation. On Super Bowl Sunday in 1999, Silvestre's dad kicked him out and told him he needed to get his life together. He sent the 21-year-old man to stay with his mother — the couple had separated — but on his way, Silvestre recalled, he ran into friends who invited him drinking. By the time he showed up at his mom's house, it was late, he was intoxicated and his family wasn't having it. His mom called the cops, telling him, 'Don't run.' Police officers took him to San Joaquin County jail, where he was stripped to his boxers and sent to the drunk tank. (He was not charged.) As he was trying to sober up, he said, three men in green uniforms came in and started questioning him in Spanish. ' De donde eres?' they asked. Where are you from? He said he replied in English that he was from Stockton. 'They're like, 'That's not what our paperwork says.'' The men loaded him onto a bus and drove to what Silvestre recognized as the Port of Stockton, the shipping hub on an eastern finger of the delta. Silvestre assumed he was being transferred to prison for violating the terms of his probation. He didn't know it at the time, but the men in green were from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the agency known as INS that handled immigration before being split into three departments in 2003, including ICE. In a holding cell, he was surrounded by people speaking many languages. A man handed him a Bible and asked whether he was scared. 'We're being deported,' he told Silvestre, who didn't know what the word meant. 'I ain't scared of nothing,' he recalled saying. He was hotheaded. He'd always been scared of God, but not prison. Hours later, for reasons neither the Chronicle nor Silvestre nor Stevens could determine, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office released Silvestre to Border Patrol, which placed him in deportation proceedings, INS records show. 'The subject was interviewed at the San Joaquin County Jail after his arrest for DUI,' a Border Patrol agent wrote in a document dated Feb. 1, 1999. 'The subject said that he was a citizen of Mexico without immigration documents to enter or remain in the United States. He also said that he entered the United States at a place other than a port of entry to avoid immigration inspection.' Stevens called the record a 'fiction' contradicted by Silvestre's U.S. birth certificate. In a warrant for Silvestre's arrest, a Border Patrol agent claimed he was a Mexican national who entered the U.S. illegally near Nogales, Ariz., two weeks earlier — even though a litany of public records showed him to reside in California. Silvestre remembered a terrible journey south. After he and other men were loaded onto a bus, his stomach started hurting. He needed to use the bathroom badly but couldn't. As the sun rose, they arrived somewhere in Los Angeles. Shackled, he and the others were ordered onto a plane and flown to Arizona, where Silvestre was placed in a two-man cell with seven other men. His stomach still hurt. He recalled telling a guard he desperately needed to use the bathroom. His hands were in zip ties, so he had no choice but to defecate in his pants. When a guard returned to his cell and opened the food tray slot, Silvestre spat at him, he said. Soon, he heard the slot open again and felt something hit him in the eye that burned like mace. The door opened and he felt two to three men grabbing him. He was sprayed again, he said, burning his genitals. He felt like he was going to pass out. Silvestre's next memory is of being at a court hearing, though he remembers little of what happened. According to records, he told the judge he was a U.S. citizen, but the judge deferred to INS. The judge ordered him deported on Feb. 5, 1999. He was bused to the Arizona-Mexico border, where he was instructed to get out and continue on foot. He said he walked into Nogales, Sonora, hungry, thirsty and cold. Using the phone at a church, he called his parents and told them he was in Mexico. They were incredulous. His mom asked whether he was really out partying with his friends. 'I'm not lying to you,' he recalled saying. His father drove to Mexico armed with his son's birth certificate. Rescuing him took two tries: During the first attempt, Silvestre was stopped at the border, detained and swiftly deported. When he tried again, he showed his birth certificate and an officer admitted him. Detained again Silvestre found that the ordeal did not end with his return. Often, he said, he woke up terrified in the middle of the night, not knowing where he was. He felt nobody believed his account of what had happened. He was left with almost no proof except for a flimsy wristband that immigration officers put on him in detention. He began to feel suicidal and used drugs heavily. As years passed, he kept working, but also partying and getting into trouble. In 2004, his mother told him he needed to change his life. He decided to move to Arizona, where he found a job packing vegetables. One weekend that year, believing he was safe because five years had passed, he joined a friend from work on a weekend trip to Mexico, where they had pizza and beers. Upon trying to reenter the U.S. with his birth certificate and California ID, he was once again detained and held in Yuma, Ariz. 'Silvestre is a citizen and national of Mexico and of no other country,' ICE records from the time state. 'He does not have nor has he ever had documents with which to enter, live, work or stay in the United States.' ICE moved to deport him, alleging he was falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen. ICE made the claim even though, two years earlier, the agency had run Silvestre's fingerprints after an arrest and correctly determined that Silvestre was who he said he was, records show. From detention in Yuma, Silvestre called his mother, who rushed to free him. She handwrote and notarized an affidavit in Spanish, stating, 'I am sending the evidence proving that my son Miguel Silvestre was born in the United States, in the city of Stockton, California.' Silvestre spent two weeks in detention before an immigration judge ruled on March 24, 2004, that he was indeed a U.S. citizen — and ordered him released. Homeland Security terminated deportation proceedings the same day. Back in California, Silvestre returned to more familiar problems. Later in 2004, he was convicted of carjacking with a gun and went to prison for three months. He bounced in and out of jail, as well as addiction treatment. Last year, his older brother accused him of threatening him, resulting in criminal charges. Silvestre maintains he's innocent. 'The truth is, it doesn't matter if this guy was a mass murderer,' said Johnson, the UC Davis law professor. 'He could go to prison and be punished but you couldn't deport him, as long as he's a citizen.' Though there is no evidence, Johnson said it's likely that racial and class profiling played a role in Silvestre's deportation. 'It's hard to imagine,' he said, 'the same kind of mix-up with a John Smith who goes to Pacific University.' In 2021, the Government Accountability Office reported that ICE policy did not require officers to update the citizenship field in their data systems after identifying evidence that a person could be a U.S. citizen. In Silvestre's case, the original 1999 mistake that seeded his long predicament was apparently unremedied in immigration records. In 2015, Silvestre said, he sobered up and devoted himself to God. But his mother's death in 2023 plunged him into grief that he hasn't recovered from. When he learned about the latest deportation paperwork, he said he felt suicidal. He got into his car and started driving recklessly, hoping police would pull him over. But then he sensed his mom was watching over him. 'Calm down, go back to your room, and go to sleep,' he heard her say. So he did. For 21 years, Silvestre hasn't left the country, fearful of being barred again. A drawstring bag that he carries everywhere contains his birth certificate, along with the immigration judge's order affirming his citizenship.
