Newlywed couple's honeymoon in US Virgin Islands ends with her ICE detention

Yahoo

22-06-2025

Taahir Shaikh needed headshots for his new job, so he set up an appointment with a photographer named Ward Sakeik. One appointment turned into three photo shoots, and the two just kept talking.
Three years later, the newlywed couple was elated to go on their honeymoon.
But after spending nine days in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the couple's trip ended with Sakeik, 22, being detained for what has become months in several U.S. immigration detention centers.
Sakeik, whose family is from Gaza but is legally stateless, has lived in the U.S. since she was 8, when her family travelled to the U.S. on a tourist visa and applied for asylum, according to her husband. While she was issued a deportation order more than a decade ago, Sakeik was permitted to stay in the U.S. under what's known as an "order of supervision," in which she regularly checked in with federal immigration authorities and is permitted work authorization, according to her lawyer and husband.
At the St. Thomas Airport, as the couple prepared to return home on Feb. 11, Sakeik was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection -- and has been held in custody in the months since.
Then, last week, the government attempted to deport Sakeik without informing her where she was being sent, according to Shaikh. Sakeik says an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer told her she was being taken to the Israel border, he said. After she waited in the airport for two hours, she was sent back to Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, where she had recently been transferred.
She later found out this was just hours before Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, Shaikh said.
Now, facing a still uncertain future, his wife's family is "fearful beyond imagination," Shaikh, a U.S. citizen, told ABC News.
"She's in a procedural black hole because she's not even eligible for a bond," Shaikh said. "They're saying 'when you were eight years old, you already were given your due process in court.' She doesn't even remember what a courtroom looks like."
Sakeik does not have citizenship in any country, according to her lawyer, Waled Elsaban, and her husband. She was born in Saudi Arabia, which does not assign citizenship at birth to anyone who is not born to Saudi citizens. Sakeik, whose family is from the Gaza Strip, has never been to the Palestinian enclave, and she was not able to obtain legal status or citizenship from there either, her lawyer said.
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The family came to the U.S. 14 years ago, when she was just 8 years old, Shaikh said.
"Fourteen years ago, my wife has no agency in the decision. She has no idea what's happening. All she knows is that they had refugee status in Saudi Arabia, they weren't given any level of citizenship [and] their work authorization was being stripped from Saudi Arabia," Shaikh said.
The family came to the U.S. on travel visas and sought asylum, Shaikh said.
Years later, Sakeik's asylum case was denied and she and her family were issued deportation orders. Since Saudi Arabia, Israel and neighboring countries were unwilling to accept Sakeik and her family, they were permitted to stay in the U.S. under an "order of supervision" -- a classification that provided them work permits. They were also required to regularly check in with ICE, according to Shaikh and Elsaban.
In the years since she was denied asylum, Sakeik and her family have explored several pathways to obtain visas or citizenship in the U.S., including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and sponsorship, but they were unsuccessful, her husband said.
"There's many stories very similar to my wife's case, where the local immigration courts have accepted it, and for whatever reason, whether it was the lawyer or the legal team at the time, whether it was just a matter of the judge that had their case on the docket, they were denied," Shaikh said.
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"My wife has tried every route to adjust her status. Now that she's finally at the finish line and she has a way to get lawful permanent residence, they stripped it from her," Shaikh said.
The couple thought they had prepared for their honeymoon. Months before their wedding, under the Biden administration, the couple called an ICE processing center to ask if they could travel to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Shaikh said they were told they could.
At the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, the morning of their trip in February, they also asked a Transportation Security Administration representative and an airline representative and were assured they could travel to the islands with just their U.S. driver's licenses, he said.
After being detained at the St. Thomas Airport on their return trip, Shaikh said Sakeik was kept handcuffed on the plane to Miami, where the flight had a layover. The couple was not given a reason for her detention and was initially told she would be released from custody in Miami.
There, the couple was separated. Sakeik was kept in Miami for three weeks before being sent to a detention center in Texas. Sakeik later told her husband she was shackled by the hands and legs as she walked through the airport, he said.
Last week, after more than three months in custody, federal authorities moved to deport Sakeik, according to Shaikh and her attorney.
On the morning of June 12, Sakeik was awakened and told she was being deported, according to her husband.
After many detainees were rounded up, she was taken to the Fort Worth Alliance Airport, her husband said.
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When she asked for travel documents or to be told where she was being taken, an officer told her she was being taken to the Israeli border, according to Shaikh.
After waiting at the airport for two hours, Sakeik, four other Palestinians and an Egyptian man were returned to detention facilities, according to Shaikh.
"An ICE officer [the next] morning came and said, 'The only reason your plane didn't come is because Israel bombed Iran last night, and there was a safety protocol that no flights were going to be flown into Israel,'" Shaikh told ABC News.
Neither Sakeik nor her attorney were given written notification of where she was being deported, her husband and attorney said. Her attorney sought a stay of removal that would keep her in the U.S. after the government moved to deport her last week, and on Monday he was told her removal "is not imminent," Elsaban told ABC News.
DHS initially told ABC News Sakeik "left the U.S." when she traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands -- a U.S. territory.
"The arrest of Ward Sakeik was not part of a targeted operation by ICE. She chose to leave the country and was then flagged by [Customs and Border Patrol] trying to reenter the U.S.," Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to ABC News.
When ABC News asked if the government's stance was that travel to the Virgin Islands, a U.S. territory, constitutes someone choosing to "leave the country," DHS provided an updated statement.
"She chose to fly over international waters and outside the U.S. customs zone and was then flagged by CBP trying to reenter the continental U.S.," McLaughlin said in a second statement.
DHS said that Sakeik is in the U.S. illegally.
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"She overstayed her visa and has had a final order by an immigration judge for over a decade," McLaughlin said in the statement. "President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to restoring integrity to the visa program and ensuring it is not abused to allow aliens a permanent one-way ticket to remain in the U.S."
McLaughlin said that Sakeik's appeal of the final order of removal was rejected by the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2014. "She has exhausted her due process rights and all of her claims for relief have been denied by the courts," the statement said.
DHS did not comment on the order of supervision Sakeik and her attorney say makes her status in the U.S. legal. DHS also did not respond to ABC News' questions asking why Sakeik was detained when she had presented valid travel documents that she says TSA had told her would suffice ahead of her trip or why, according to Sakeik, she was told she would be sent to the Israeli border when she has never lived in the region and is not a national of any country.
DHS also did not respond to whether it was violating a standing court order that bars the removal of migrants to third countries without a proper chance to challenge these removals.
The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to deport migrants. Last month, a federal judge in Boston ruled that the Trump administration's deportations of eight men -- who the administration alleged were convicted of violent crimes -- to South Sudan "unquestionably" violated an earlier order by not giving them adequate due process, including a "meaningful opportunity to object" to their removals to a country other than their own.
Shaikh, who said he has visited his wife 18 times in the months that she's been held in detention, also submitted a green card application for Sakeik in February -- two days after she was detained. Her application is pending.
Referring to his wife's family, Shaikh said, "They don't want to live like this. My wife has tried every route to adjust her status."