Ward Sakeik stands in a Dallas kitchen making watermelon juice. For 140 days, someone else decided what and when she would eat. The 22-year-old wedding photographer spent the last five months in ICE detention after being arrested on her own honeymoon. Recently released and reunited with her family, the simple act of planning her day feels overwhelming.
"I feel like I'm so behind in life," she says. Her case became a rallying point for immigration advocates in a time of tumult and uncertainty for anyone not born in the U.S. But Sakeik says her experience was all the more bewildering because every question she faced had been resolved over a decade ago.
Interrupted Honeymoon
She and her husband had planned their honeymoon carefully, specifically choosing destinations within the territory of the United States because of her immigration status.
Sakeik is stateless. Born in Saudi Arabia, she moved to the U.S. with her family when she was nine. Saudi Arabia does not automatically grant citizenship to children born on its soil, and acquiring citizenship there—especially with non-Saudi parents or lineage—is a rare and difficult process. Sakeik’s family is originally from the Gaza Strip, which along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem is regarded by international law as Occupied Palestinian Territory.
“ Their family never flew under the radar ever since day one,” says Sakeik’s husband, Taahir Shaikh, a U.S. citizen. “America knew who they were when they came into the border. They went through the court system. They were given due process. They complied with their deportation orders.”
Those orders had been suspended as a matter of routine. Shaikh says the family was granted an Order of Supervision (OSUP) by ICE, a system allowing noncitizens awaiting deportation or other immigration proceedings to stay in the U.S. under certain restrictions—such as regular check-ins—rather than being held in detention.
“ She's gone to the same ICE processing center every year her entire life for 14 years,” Taahir says. ICE officers would mention how she’s grown up since they had last seen her, and even congratulated her on her college graduation in 2023, he recalls. Her stateless status left her vulnerable. “She doesn't have an embassy or a consulate back home that can fight for her legal protection,” Taahir Shaikh notes.
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The couple planned their honeymoon accordingly. "I told my husband… we're gonna have to travel within the U.S., even though I would love to go to Turkey," Sakeik recalls. "So we decided that we're going to do two weeks in the Virgin Islands because it's U.S. territory."
At the Dallas airport, airline employees confirmed their plan was sound. Upon their return, they planned to continue their honeymoon at national parks in Arizona and Colorado.
They stayed nine days in the Virgin Islands, but as they prepared to fly home, Sakeik was detained by ICE—first at the St. Thomas Airport, then again when they reached Miami.
Bureaucratic Maze
What followed was months of confusion.
In St. Thomas, a Customs and Border Protection officer told her that if she could provide proof of her scheduled reporting date with ICE, she would be released. She did, but “I still was detained regardless.”
History did not seem to matter. "For the last 14 or 15 years that I've been here in America, I was never hiding from ICE. They know exactly where I [was]. They know where I live, they know my family, they know the air I breathe, they know everything," she says.
Even when she was transferred to Dallas facilities, the disconnect persisted. “They're my people,” she recalls thinking. “They know what's going on.” But the officers who held her seemed unaware of her record. “When a lot of them were confused, that's when I [thought], who the hell do I blame?"
Sakeik was held in three different facilities during her detention, the longest at the El Valle Detention Center outside of McAllen, Texas. There, dust would visibly fall whenever the lights would turn on. When she complained to facility management, "he literally told me, ‘you are in the detention center. What do you expect?’
The dormitory housed about 100 women, mostly Latina immigrants and some Russians, most of whom wore blue uniforms indicating they were not considered criminals. Sakeik calls them “blues.” “We're all different. The way we came [here], the way our lives are, what we live for, what we've achieved, our jobs, and what documents we have.” The names of previous detainees were carved onto the mental bunks. "On my bed alone, I have probably had like a hundred names.“
After years of running her own business and making her own decisions, Sakeik found herself subject to someone else's routine for every aspect of her day. She found solace in Just Dance DVD’s, which also kept her active.
Then, on June 12, she was awakened in the middle of the night and told to gather her things. An official told her she was about to be flown “to the Israeli border” on a flight her husband later learned was scheduled for Egypt. But waiting on the tarmac, she was told she was staying after all.
Release
Twenty days later, on July 2, Sakeik was eating Maruchan ramen with a friend when an ICE officer called her aside.
"I went outside and I saw that he was holding documents. So I literally thought in my head, he's about to make me sign another travel document to God knows wherever," she recalls. "And then he looked at me, ‘Hey, you're being released.’ I started laughing. I was like, yeah, you think so?"
"I didn't believe that I was getting released up until I hugged my husband… that's how far off it was from me. I didn't believe it. I didn't trust anybody."
But after more than 10 years in America, Sakeik had a community to vouch for her. Her release came after a sustained advocacy campaign organized by her husband and people who knew her. Taahir had started a social media page, and with their legal team started a petition to present to their local congresswoman. Taahir also gathered testimonials from people from her mosque, past university professors, business partners, friends, and her photography teacher. Imam Omar Suleiman, founding president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, got their story out to millions, sharing Sakeik’s story in a Friday sermon.
”She literally embraced every opportunity the country gave her,” Taahir says. “She went through the American school system. This is a girl who has an annual blood donation record at her local Carter BloodCare. Every single client or person that's interacted with her can vouch that her heart is [pure].”
It is also more devout. The time in detention brought Sakeik closer to her faith; she decided to start practicing wearing a hijab. "That's the biggest blessing,” she says, “because I promise you, whenever your freedom has been taken away from you and you have your time with God, you really start to reflect."
Lessons
Sakeik now has an insider’s view of the Trump Administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement campaign, which extends beyond those with criminal cases to target undocumented individuals regardless of their legal or compliance status. To satisfy presidential demands, field offices are directed to meet new daily arrest quotas—75 arrests per office—raising agency-wide targets to 1,200–1,500 arrests per day, up from only about a few hundred.
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Her experience reflects an agency with spotty internal communication. "Some of the ICE officers themselves would even tell me, ‘I don't know why you're here,’” Sakeik recalls. “Some of them would straight up tell me, ‘If it was up to us, we'd release you.’"
She's planning to reopen her photography business in the fall but is taking time to readjust to life outside detention. "I sleep a lot. I stay mainly indoors,” she says. “It's just the same routine I had in detention, I'm having difficulty letting it go." She shops online to avoid the anxiety produced by visiting stores. "Everything in Costco is considered contraband at the detention center.”
But Sakeik also has pledged not to forget what she left behind. "I know how excited I was to receive a letter in there. I would literally fly off of my bunk when the mail lady would come," she says. Sakeik plans to start a letter-writing campaign to support women still inside, and speak for them in now that she's free.
"You know, there're plenty more women detained that unfortunately are not getting the same media attention or are too afraid to speak up," she says. "So if I can be that one voice… then yes, why not?"
English (US) · 