A 22-Year-Old Palestinian Has Been Locked Up in 'High-Security' ICE Detention for 16 Months
Taher Mohammed Taher Hasan has faced harassment from detainees and guards and is held in a cockroach-infested cell, his legal team says.
A 22-year-old Palestinian has been languishing in a cockroach-ridden, high-security section of an ICE detention center for 16 months. He hasn't been convicted of a crime, but the authorities won't release him, or even deport him.
Taher Mohammed Taher Hasan first arrived in the US on a six-month visitor visa in September 2023. He planned to visit his cousin in Florida and return to Palestine before his visa expired. But then, Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks, and Israel's ensuing genocide, unfolded. Hasan grew increasingly fearful of going home as the violence across Palestine, including in his hometown of Nablus, worsened. He decided to stay with his friends in Texas.
His visa expired in March 2024. Not long after, while he was working as a locksmith around Waco, Texas, Hasan got a call to help someone who was locked out of their car. That client was located within a local military base. While entering the base, his identification was checked. He was then arrested, transferred to ICE custody, and the Department of Homeland Security initiated the process to remove him from the US.
Sixteen months later, he remains in an ICE detention facility, with no clear indication of why he hasn’t been deported or released.
“I lost two years of my life, my best years of life, without doing anything, without being charged [with] anything,” Hasan told Zeteo on a phone call from the facility, with the help of an interpreter.
Last month, Hasan filed a petition challenging his detention in federal court. His lawyers say he has never been convicted of a crime, yet he’s been put in a high-security facility where he’s faced harassment. Hasan said that he hasn’t heard anything in months from authorities about why he’s detained. His case represents the sweeping and unjustified nature of the Trump administration’s detention regime.