3 February 5 - 11, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Turning Up the Heat on ICE North Texas protesters, faith leaders, politicians share outrage over violence and cruelty in Trump’s immigration policies. BY DALLA OBSERVER STAFF T hat sound you’ve been hearing that perhaps you can’t quite place over the past few weeks is likely coming from a downtown street, City Hall plaza or Capitol building near you. It might even be coming from the neighborhood coffee shop or re- cord store. It’s the sound of people making their voices heard in many different ways in opposition to the extreme immigration en- forcement policies of President Donald Trump’s administration and the recent bru- tality displayed by ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol. Following the two recent Minnesota inci- dents in which federal agents shot and killed anti-ICE protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti, people across North Texas have banded together to keep the spotlight on not only those deaths, but also the plight of many who critics say have been unjustly treated, detained and deported. Texas houses more ICE detainees than any other state, with more than 17,000 in detention now. The Dallas ICE field office, where a gunman killed two detainees and injured another in September, is reportedly one of the busiest such offices in the coun- try, processing around 100 arrests per day. On a near-weekly basis, new headlines emerge telling of immigrants without crim- inal records being detained and deported or being separated from their families in Texas and beyond. Over the course of a single week in North Texas, even when a winter storm blew through the region, bringing much of the area’s activity to a halt, ICE- and im- migration-related storylines proliferate. The images and cries of Minnesota are all too often felt strongly here in Dallas, where ICE agents have become common- place. The Observer has been on the scene for protests, on the phone with families and watching it all as closely as we can. Cold as ICE I n many of her late-night conversations with her brother-in-law, Shahd Arnaout often promised Wael Tarabishi that she would do everything in her power to help the sick man reunite with his father, Maher Tara- bishi, who has been in custody at a federal immigration detention center since October. On Jan. 23, though, Wael died, leaving that promise unfulfilled. The 30-year-old man succumbed to the effects of Pompe dis- ease, a neurological disorder that slowly de- teriorated his muscles over the course of his life, an illness doctors expected would kill him by age 10. Wael’s sudden fall into critical illness, Ar- naout believes, is a direct result of Maher’s care for his son ending after he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities while checking in to a routine appointment at the Dallas ICE field office on Oct. 28. As Wael’s condition declined, the Tara- bishi family petitioned for Maher’s release from the Bluebonnet Detention Center so that he could resume care of his son. Then they asked that Maher be allowed to say goodbye. Those requests, they say, were denied. “He [Maher] couldn’t take the news whatsoever. He was saying, ‘You’re joking. You’re lying to me. Please tell me the truth. This is not the truth,’” Aranout said. “I’m trying to calm him down. I’m not trying to lose him, too. I’m trying to let him know that we are doing our best to let him out. He’s go- ing crazy because the person he took care of for 30 years, he [wasn’t there] when he was dying.” The family is pleading for Maher to be re- leased for Wael’s funeral, but it’s a request Arnaout has little faith in. In a statement, ICE stated that the agency has not yet re- ceived a formal request for Tarabishi to be released for his son’s funeral. Temporary re- lease requests are “reviewed on a case-by- case basis,” the statement said, and ICE takes factors such as “security risk, legal sta- tus, and available resources” after a request is made. The Tarabishi family says that Maher first came to the U.S. in the ‘90s and spent more than a decade living in North Texas, starting a family while going through the slow process of applying for asylum. In 2011, an immigration court acknowledged that although Maher’s asylum application had not been approved, his presence in the U.S. was necessary to care for Wael’s condi- tion. He was granted deferred action and supervised release, and for 14 years has at- tended check-ins at the ICE field office during which time he has “never even got- ten a speeding ticket.” Patrick Williams | UNFAIR PARK | >> p4 Frustrated Dallas citizens came out to protest ICE on January 29, 2026. THE ICE OUT ISSUE
