Sisterhood sustained her for 141 days in ICE custody. Now she’s fighting for those still inside.

This article was published in partnership with The Barbed Wire.

On the evening of Feb. 11, 22-year-old Ward Sakeik sat on a plane from the U.S. Virgin Islands to Miami. She and her husband, Taahir Shaikh, were returning from their honeymoon, but he was sitting a few rows away. She didn’t look back at him — her handlers told her that even smiling at him could be considered a crime. 

Sakeik, a wedding photographer who’s lived in Texas since the age of 9, hadn’t slept for two days. She’d spent nearly 36 hours confined to a small intake room at the Cyril E. King Airport in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tired, she kept her eyes on the book she’d brought on board. It was about marriage and relationships. 

Behind her, a woman made small talk. “You look like you’re so sleepy,” Sakeik remembered the woman saying before offering her a pillow. “Here, borrow this.”

The woman — along with almost every other passenger on the plane — was unaware that Sakeik and three others were in ICE custody. Sakeik had been on her honeymoon one day and detained the next.

After arriving in Miami, Sakeik and her fellow detainees were ushered to the back of the plane to deboard. Sakeik was searched and handcuffed while her new husband, a U.S. citizen who was not detained, was free to go back to their new home alone. 

“I was just so filled with anger, it’s like human trafficking,” Sakeik later told The Barbed Wire. “Everything happened behind the airport, under the airport, on the side of the airport, I felt like I was being trafficked.”

Sakeik spent the next 141 days in ICE detention. Her release in July made national and international headlines as a dragnet of immigration crackdowns has caught immigrants on legal paths to citizenship alongside those with criminal histories who were the supposed targets. 

As a Palestinian woman born in Saudi Arabia — a country with no birthright citizenship — she is stateless. 

This week, Israel launched ground invasions on Gaza City as a United Nations inquiry found Israel has committed genocide in Palestinian territories. Sakeik has nowhere to be deported to — though that didn’t stop the Trump administration from trying.

In addition to her husband and legal team, Sakeik said a sisterhood she formed while detained with other women helped her to survive the trauma of her experience in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Now, she is using her platform to bring attention to the plight of women in detention, including the case of 32-year-old Palestinian Leqaa Kordia, the second Columbia University protester arrested this spring, who has since been dubbed “the forgotten prisoner” while sitting in ICE detention for nearly six months. 

The Barbed Wire spent several days with Sakeik. The following is reconstructed from her memory, as well as interviews with her husband, Shaikh, and her lawyers. Sakeik spoke in-depth about her time in detention to shed light on some of ICE’s increasingly scrutinized and legally dubious practices, which she described as stripping her of her humanity. 

“Being detained was one of the hardest, most difficult challenges that I’ve had to face in my entire life. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually challenging,” Sakeik said. “I wouldn’t wish this upon anybody, not even my worst enemy.”

In a statement, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said “any claim that there is a lack of food or subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false.”

The statement continued: “Meals are certified by dieticians. Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE. Why does the media continue to fall for the sob stories of illegal aliens in detention and villainize ICE law enforcement?”

‘There’s no place else that ward can call home’

The United States once seemed to Sakeik like a break from conservative Saudi Arabia, where she spent the first few years of her life before her family moved to Texas seeking asylum in 2010. Her parents’ asylum request was denied, but the family was granted an order of supervision, which allows noncitizens awaiting deportation or other immigration proceedings to stay in the U.S. without being held in detention. Their order required annual check-ins, among other conditions.

In Garland, Sakeik, who is Muslim, had “the most beautiful, craziest childhood,” with her tight-knit Middle Eastern family. As a middle child, Sakeik said she “wanted to do everything that my older sister did.”

“I wanted to breathe the same air she was breathing.”

Sakeik was a model student. She took an interest in photography in the 9th grade, when a teacher, who she affectionately called Mamma Donna, handed her a camera. She stayed late to use a school laptop to learn Photoshop and attended football practice and games, taking action shots she’d sell to the players and their parents for $1.

Sakeik graduated early from University of Texas at Arlington in 2023, with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a minor in Arabic, to build her photography business. 

All the while, her annual check-ins with ICE had become routine: She went to the same ICE processing center every year for 13 years. ICE officers there remembered her. One even congratulated her on graduating from college.  

Sakeik met Shaikh briefly in college. He later hired her to take professional head shots for his job at Fidelity Investments. 

“Headshot sessions take me like, max, 25 minutes. This took two hours,” Sakeik said. 

They got engaged in September 2024, then wed in Dallas in January in front of more than 300 guests. The happy couple beamed at each other, hands interlocked underneath twinkle lights as their families looked on. 

They chose the U.S. Virgin Islands for their honeymoon destination. Sakeik said she picked it because of the gorgeous turquoise views. But it also kept her in line with one of the conditions of her order of supervision — she must remain in a U.S. territory. 

In a photo taken in St. Thomas, Sakeik smiles, relaxed, on the edge of a pier in a white silk dress. After nine days of watching glorious sunsets over the water, Sakeik and Shaikh packed and headed out from their hotel, back home.

But when they arrived at the St. Thomas airport, Sakeik was flagged by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent who asked if she was a U.S. citizen. Sakeik tried to explain that she had an order of supervision that allowed her to legally stay in the country, and had been in compliance with ICE for years. She said she showed him notice of her next reporting date with ICE as proof. It didn’t seem to matter.  

When she asked why she was detained, Sakeik said the agent told her it was because she’s not a U.S. citizen.

Photos of Sakeik’s life — her graduation, wedding, and honeymoon — were soon splashed across news sites the world over, as her husband pleaded for her release.

During her detainment, Sakeik was shuttled between three facilities, each of which she said suffered from overcrowding and hygiene issues. In some, there were cockroaches, ants, grasshoppers, and spiders, which bit the women, Sakeik said after she was released.

Sakeik’s legal team argued that the U.S. government did not have the right to deport her due to protections offered to Palestinians under a deferred enforced departure memorandum enacted by the Biden administration. Because of the Israeli response to the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack carried out by Hamas, the Biden administration determined that civilians were in danger in Gaza and deferred the removal of Palestinians in the United States until Aug. 13 of this year. 

Yet, the Department of Homeland Security said they had the authority to detain her. 

“Ward Sakeik chose to fly over international waters outside the U.S. customs zone and was then flagged by CBP trying to renter (sic) the continental U.S.,” McLaughlin, the assistant secretary, said in a statement. 

Sakeik’s lawyers disagreed. Maria Kari, an attorney on Sakeik’s legal team, emphasized that her client had a right to travel to U.S. territory.

“We all have these documents that we take for granted that allow us to get on flights and see the world, but this is something that Sakeik has never had,” Kari added. “There is no country that claims her to be a citizen of that country. There is no place else that Sakeik can call home.”

‘This is just the beginning’

By the time the van reached what seemed to be an old pink adobe hotel, Sakeik was indignant. Only later did she learn she was at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida. 

The staff, Sakeik said, were disrespectful — “they literally bullied us.” The food was disgusting. “I wouldn’t even feed it to dogs,” she said. And it was freezing cold.

“I started getting extreme depression. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk, I felt paralyzed,” Sakeik said. “I would cry the entire time. I started having panic attacks.”

By her third week in Broward, Sakeik said she realized she needed to get into a routine. She started working out with old dance DVDs. And she made friends: She bonded with a woman from Slovakia and two Muslim women in her dorm. 

Meanwhile, Sakeik and her legal team filed a green card application, and a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. They argued she was being wrongfully detained, in violation of the Biden administration’s deferred enforcement memo.  

As her lawyers continued to work on her case back in Texas, Sakeik began making preparations for Ramadan, a sacred time for Muslims that typically involves fasting, communal prayer, and reflection. She said she got the OK from officers and the art department to hang lanterns and a banner she made that read, “Ramadan Kareem.” Later, she was instructed to take it all down.

“I’m celebrating the holiday that’s supposed to be the closest with families alone in a place that I don’t know, I don’t have family around me, and you took down my decorations,” Sakeik said. “I started crying, but I didn’t let it get to me.”

Instead, she decided to host a dinner. Sakeik used commissary funds for ingredients, and with help from a friend from Taiwan, she made sushi from crushed Doritos, tortillas, and uncooked Maruchan noodles.

That same night, Sakeik said she was told to pack her bags. “Baby, you are going back home! You’re going to Dallas,’” Sakeik remembered an officer telling her. She left her shampoo and conditioner along with her remaining food as a parting gift to her roommates. But as she waited with a handful of other women downstairs, a friend turned to her: “I don’t think we’re going home. We’re being transferred. This is just the beginning.”

‘Just like human trafficking’

Sakeik and her friend spent two days in handcuffs as they were transferred to Texas, first to a facility in Harlingen, then El Valle Detention Center outside of McAllen. 

The facility was packed, Sakeik said, and covered in dust. Every day, more women were shuffled in, processed, and then taken away, “literally, just like human trafficking.” By the time she left, Sakeik said there were 100 detained women in each of the three women’s dorms. There was no privacy, even in bathrooms where they showered six at a time. 

She faced a greater language barrier at El Valle since many detainees only spoke Spanish.

Still, she managed to make friends. She got close with another Muslim woman. They cooked together, ate together, prayed together. 

“It’s very normal to bond off of trauma. So a lot of friendships are being made in there,” Sakeik said. “You have to now make family there, because God knows how long it’s gonna take for you to see your actual family.”

On June 11, Sakeik was told she was being transferred, though not where.

“I didn’t even pack my stuff. I was too busy saying goodbye to all the girls,” she said. 

Her newfound friends cried, cheered her on, and helped her gather her things: “It was a beautiful sisterhood.”

She was put in a van and taken to Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, where other women told her they’d already spent four days in an overcrowded intake room. Later, she was shuffled to another room, where Sakeik said she slept on the ground. The next day, Sakeik said ICE agents wrote numbers on their wrists — she was #4 — then boarded them onto a bus to Alliance Airport in Fort Worth. 

When Sakeik saw that the Palestinian woman next to her had a #3 on her wrist, she said she knew she was being deported. She had only $45. She turned to the woman and said, “‘Can I please stay with you until my husband comes? Please?’ She’s like, ‘Absolutely. We have enough to buy a shawarma and to make a phone call.’” 

However, with no explanation, Sakeik and the Palestinians on the bus were brought back to Prairieland. She later heard that Israel’s airspace may have been closed following their bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

Back at Prairieland, Sakeik met 32-year-old Leqaa Kordia.

Like Mahmoud Khalil, Kordia was arrested after protesting at Columbia University over the war in Gaza last year, though prosecutors later dropped the charges against her. Then, after President Donald Trump came into office threatening to deport protesters who are foreign students, Kordia was arrested in March in New Jersey. The Department of Homeland Security said she’d overstayed an expired student visa; her lawyers said she’s been detained for her pro-Palestinian activism. 

Just a week earlier, Kordia had been confined to her cell while a federal court hearing in her case went on without her.

Both cases had made national news.

“I saw you on TV!” Kordia later said to Ward when the pair first met. 

Ward said she could tell that Kordia — wrapped in a sweater — was sick. The fact that she was still so friendly was endearing to Sakeik. The pair became fast friends. They talked about growing up in Middle Eastern households, their favorite dresses, “girl talk, all that good stuff.”  

EMBED https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNj1Ts4stBx/

For Sakeik, Prairieland was both the closest to — and furthest from — home. After the failed effort in mid-June, ICE attempted to deport Sakeik again on June 30.

By then, her lawyers had filed an emergency motion to keep her in the country, as well as another habeas petition in federal court for the Northern District of Texas. They asserted that the government had violated Sakeik’s due process by trying to deport her while deferred enforcement for Palestinians was still in effect. A judge in the case granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting her from being deported.

Sakeik’s husband and lawyers said that, despite the order, they had to argue with Prairieland staff over the phone to stop them from moving her again.

“Two days later, I was released,” Sakeik said. She later found out she had been, once again, only a hair’s breadth away from being deported.

‘They’re mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers’

Sakeik and her lawyers spoke at a press conference from the Wyndham Hotel in Irving on July 3 — fewer than 36 hours after she was finally released. The hotel was familiar; she’d done photoshoots at its wedding venue. 

The specifics of Sakeik’s legal status are complex. She had a final order of deportation stemming from her parents’ asylum application years ago — which DHS said was part of the reason she was detained. 

However, her lawyer, Maria Kari, said that the final order was issued when she was a child, and that it doesn’t mean immediate deportation. “You won’t be removed if there’s no place that accepts you, and there is no place that accepts Ward and her family,” Kari told The Barbed Wire. “They are stateless.”

Additionally, Kari said Sakeik has never had a credible fear interview — part of the asylum process allowing applicants to explain why they fear persecution or torture were they to be deported. Sakeik said she fears, in part, that no country will take her.

DHS said that “following her American husband and her filing the appropriate legal applications for her to remain in the country and become a legal permanent resident, she was released from ICE custody.” 

Kari countered — “we don’t accept that statement, what they did was unlawful” — noting that Sakeik got preliminary approval on her green card application days before DHS tried to deport her for the second time. Still, she should be protected as her green card application process plays out, Kari said.

At the press conference, Sakeik summed up her case a different way: “I was criminalized for being stateless,” she said. “I didn’t choose to be stateless.”

Then she pivoted to her sisters — the women she met in detention, and who she is now focusing her efforts on supporting.

“I want to share with you the honor of those who I left behind,” Sakeik told reporters. “Women who come here for better lives are voiceless and helpless. A lot of these women don’t have the money for lawyers or media outreach. They come here to provide for their families.” 

“They’re mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers,” she continued. “They’re superheroes. There are humans, and their lives hold value, and I will continue to fight with them.”

Sakeik’s return home was accomplished through the proper legal channels, but her wellbeing was only ensured by her friendships with the women who kept her company during detention. These women, from backgrounds both similar and wildly different from Sakeik’s, provided her a network of support.

“We bonded over trauma, over this thing we share,” Sakeik said. 

When Sakeik was detained, her husband and attorneys started a social media page and a petition to present to their local congresswoman, which grew to more than 4,000 signatures. Shaikh also gathered testimonials from Sakeik’s mosque, professors, friends, teachers — anyone they could think of. Imam Omar Suleiman, the founding president of the Yagqeen Institute for Islamic Research, also shared Sakeik’s story to millions.

Since her release, Sakeik has paid that work forward. 

She has become an outspoken critic of Trump’s immigration policies, namely relating to the broad criminalization of immigrants across ethnicities and backgrounds. But she’s also become an outspoken advocate for Leqaa Kordia, whom she calls her best friend, and whose case has been platformed by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Texas Civil Rights Project. In May, Kordia’s legal team told reporters that she hadn’t had access to halal meals, which meant she had lost nearly 50 pounds since her arrest in mid-March.

In June, Korida’s attorneys filed a petition to the court citing the “miserable conditions” in the Prairieland detention center, which was so crowded upon her arrival that she slept on the floor and developed “a severe rash,” reported The Dallas Morning News. Kordia’s attorneys have said the lack of hygiene at Prairieland “makes her feel unworthy of God,” the newspaper reported.

That same month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Rebecca Rutherford issued an opinion recommending that Korida be released from federal custody. 

Still, as summer turns to fall, Kordia remains in detention.

In late August, Sakeik held a letter-writing event on Kordia’s behalf, which drew almost 100 supporters to a coffee shop in Irving. 

“Inside, you hold onto the smallest things that can give you hope,” Sakeik said in a video posted on Instagram two weeks ago, urging others to send messages of support to Kordia. With no phones inside, letters matter more than ever, Sakeik explained.

“To know that you have voices behind you” can make all the difference in the world, she continued. “People assuring her that they care for her and she’s not alone — and that she will never be alone. There’s people behind her.”