Compassion and Immigration Enforcement
Wael Tarabishi (pictured above with his father) died on January 23, 2026 after a month in the hospital and a fever that spiked to 106. Wael was a U.S. citizen who lived to 30 despite being expected to die by the age of 10 due to a chronic muscular disease. Unable to eat, drink or walk, his survival depended on his father, Maher, who ministered to him throughout his life. Maher came on a tourist visa from Kuwait in 1994, a year before Wael was born. When his visa expired and his request for asylum to care for his son was denied, he stayed, eventually receiving a reprieve from a deportation order by the Obama administration so he could continue his son’s care. Maher was required to check in once a year with immigration officials, but when he did so on October 28, 2025 he was arrested and sent to a detention facility three hours away. The folder of papers he had, documenting his role as his son’s caregiver, was ignored. Pleas to ICE officials were denied.
In November, Wael pleaded for his father’s return. “He was the person who helped me want to live for tomorrow.” “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.” Other family members tried to step in but could not master the techniques, including the maintenance of Wael’s feeding tube. After Wael died, the family pleaded with ICE officials to release Maher just to attend his son’s funeral. That request was also denied.
Last June, Narciso Barranco was arrested by federal agents while working on his job clearing weeds outside an IHOP restaurant in Southern California. A Mexican national, he had lived in the U.S. for three decades. Taken to a detention center, he was scheduled for deportation. This might seem appropriate except for the fact that he had three sons, all citizens, in the U.S. Marine Corps. That qualified him to have lawful status under the government’s Parole in Place program that also offered an expedited path to permanent residency. The Department of Homeland Security defended the violence of his arrest, which included pinning him to the ground and applying handcuffs, by saying he had raised his weed trimmer at the agents.
An immigration judge eventually ended his deportation case, but Mr. Barranco said that “I am still afraid I could be grabbed.”
Amalia Marcano, held with her family at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas since December 11, 2025 was by January 18th facing death. She had been a healthy toddler when she arrived at Dilley. Efforts to get medical help at Dilley had led only to offering fever medication, so on January 18th she was rushed to a children’s hospital in San Antonio. Doctors there treated her for pneumonia, COVID-19, RSV and severe respiratory distress. She spent ten days in the hospital before being returned to Dilley. Despite having prescriptions for follow-up medications, staff at Dilley never provided them according to a lawsuit filed on her behalf. She was given only PediaSure, not the breathing medications ordered by her doctors.
Her mother Kheliin Valero Marcano and Stiven Arrita Prieto had fled Venezuela in 2024. Amalia was born in Mexico, and the family applied for asylum in the U.S. They were admitted and told to check-in regularly with immigration officials, which they had done. Yet when they reported for their check-in on December 11th, they were taken into custody.
Amalia and her parents were eventually released but only after their lawyer field an emergency challenge in federal court. Records indicate that there have been 11 EMS calls from Dilley to treat children since mid-September.
Some might dismiss these three cases as isolated missteps in a massive federal program to deal with illegal immigration, except of course that those arrested in these cases were here legally and there have been countless other, similar stories since the administration began its deportation efforts.
Certainly, many immigrants are not here legally. Under our Constitution we are a nation committed to the rule of law. Immigration enforcement is upholding the rule of law for illegal immigrants. Yet the rule of law neither requires nor sanctions applying it with malice. Law can be both firm and compassionate.
As early as 1630 when John Winthrop urged his own band of immigrants on their way to Boston harbor to create a “city upon a hill” we have always had a foundational commitment to protect human dignity. He called his sermon “A Model of Christian Charity” and in it he recalled the prophet Micah’s plea “to do justly, to love mercy.” While our founders, intent on preserving religious freedom, shied away from calling America a Christian Nation, they were steeped in such biblical values and verse, among which also includes this admonition from Exodus (22:21): “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
Photo Credits: Wael and Maher Tarabish: www.presstv.ir; Narciso Barranco: www. edition.cnn.com; Amalia Marcano: AP News
