A Palestinian woman released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention on Tuesday says she and others faced mistreatment while detained. Still, the Department of Homeland Security dismissed her account as one of many “sob stories.”
“The entire detention process was not great. I wouldn’t wish this upon anybody. It was very hard, very traumatizing, and very, very difficult, is what I would say,” Ward Sakeik told CNN’s Danny Freeman on Saturday morning.
Sakeik, 22, a stateless person whose family is from Gaza, was born in Saudi Arabia, a country that does not grant birthright citizenship to children of foreign-born parents, according to The Guardian. She entered the U.S. legally under a tourist visa when she was 8 and was allowed to remain, as long as she regularly checked in with ICE.