US immigration authorities keep Arlington father from attending son’s funeral

The family of an Arlington man who has been held in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since last fall is urging federal authorities to grant his immediate temporary release, saying the agency is preventing him from attending his son’s funeral.

Maher Tarabishi, detained since late October, is being held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, roughly 320 kilometers west of Dallas. On Monday, his family issued a public statement on social media, pleading for a humanitarian release so he can bury his son.

Tarabishi's son, Wael Tarabishi, 30, died over the weekend after spending a month in the intensive care unit at Mansfield Medical Center.

He suffered complications related to Pompe disease, a rare genetic disorder, and had been hospitalized in December following a stomach infection.

“He passed without his beloved father, primary caregiver and constant life companion, Maher by his side,” the family said in its statement.

Tarabishi came to the US from Jordan in 1994. He was detained on October 28, 2025, after attending his routine annual check-in at the Dallas ICE Field Office, a process he had complied with for years.

His daughter-in-law, Shahd Arnaout, has called on the public to pressure elected officials to intervene, describing the situation as both cruel and avoidable.

“I feel like this is all on ICE, because if my father-in-law was next to him right now, none of that would happen,” Arnaout said.

The family says they recently learned that Tarabishi’s asylum case was denied because the attorney who filed it had been practicing law without a valid license.

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The issue surfaced during a detailed review of the case after Tarabishi was taken into custody. Their current attorney, Ali Elhorr, has filed a motion with the US Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) seeking to reopen the case.

“Like the other victims of this fraudulent attorney, Maher’s immigration case was denied and he was ordered removed based on the asylum application that was filed on his behalf,” the family’s statement said.

Last month, an ICE spokesperson described Tarabishi as a “self-admitted member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),” the internationally recognized representative of Palestinians.

The family rejected the characterization, calling it false and defamatory and saying it has been used to justify keeping Tarabishi detained during his son’s final days.

The case unfolds amid growing public outrage over US President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement, which has sparked mass demonstrations across the country, particularly in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, since the launch of its sweeping Operation Metro Surge earlier this month.

Public anger has intensified after two separate incidents in which federal immigration agents fatally shot American citizens; 37-year-old Renée Nicole Macklin Good on January 7 and 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti on January 24, sparking nationwide protests and demands for accountability amid widespread criticism of ICE’s conduct under the Trump administration.

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