The family believes the emotional shock of the detention played a significant role in his sudden decline.

In late October 2025, Maher Tarabashi was detained during a routine check-in at a Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas, according to his family and attorney. For years, these check-ins had been a formality—appointments he never missed, a condition of remaining in the country under supervision.

Before his detention, the 62-year-old was the sole, full-time caregiver for his 30-year-old son, Wael Tarabashi, who lived with Advanced Pompe Disease. Wael was unable to breathe, eat, or move independently and depended entirely on his father for round-the-clock care. Their lives were structured around this fragile rhythm of reliance and presence.

In the weeks following Maher’s detention, Wael’s health began to deteriorate. He was hospitalized multiple times, spending his final weeks in intensive care before passing away on January 23. His family believes the abrupt separation from his father—his primary caregiver and emotional anchor—placed an unbearable strain on a body already weakened by illness.

Maher remains in detention at the Bluebonnet Detention Center. Authorities have denied his request to attend his son’s funeral. Meanwhile, his family has been raising funds to cover legal expenses and basic needs as they navigate a process that has offered little space for compassion.

Maher first arrived in the United States from Jordan in 1994. After his asylum application was denied in 2006, a deportation order was issued. Because Wael—a U.S. citizen—was fully dependent on him for daily survival, Maher was reportedly allowed to remain in the country under supervision so he could continue providing care.

“He had check-ins with ICE every year,” his attorney said. “He never missed a single one.”

Wael’s family does not claim that illness alone tells the full story. In a public appeal, they described a convergence of physical fragility and emotional shock—a system overwhelmed not only by disease, but by loss, fear, and sudden absence.

From a deeper lens, this case raises difficult questions that law alone cannot answer. Systems are built to enforce rules, but lives are lived in relationships. When enforcement interrupts care, the cost is not always immediate or visible—but it is real. Justice without mercy may be orderly, yet it risks becoming blind to the very human weight it carries.

In moments like these, restraint, discretion, and compassion are not exemptions from the law—they are its moral test.