Before his family pleaded with the president, before his story spread on social media and got its own Wikipedia page, Wael Tarabishi lay on a hospital bed, a thick blanket draped over him, and stared into the camera.
Wael was sick. After immigration officers arrested his father, Maher Tarabishi, Wael’s already fragile health crumbled. Speaking in a raspy voice, the 30-year-old Arlington man begged the U.S. government to release his father, who was his primary caregiver.
“I feel so lost,” Wael said in the video posted to social media Dec. 12. “My family is my everything. Please release him.”
Those pleas did not work. Wael died last week at a Mansfield hospital from complications of Pompe disease, a rare genetic condition that causes progressive muscle weakness. On Thursday, his family will gather to pray and bury him at a nearby Muslim cemetery. Roughly 200 miles west of Dallas, his father remains jailed at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson.
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“I don’t have words to describe our pain,” Shahd Arnaout, Wael’s sister-in-law, told The Dallas Morning News this week. “This should not be happening.”
Tarabishi’s attorney, Ali Elhorr, said in a statement that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied their request to allow Tarabishi to attend his son’s funeral. A spokesperson for ICE told The News it did not receive a formal request for release and that it considers such requests on a case-by-case basis.
The case has drawn widespread outrage among immigration and human rights advocates, who have urged the government to allow the family to reunite.
Tarabishi, 62, a native of Jordan, has lived in the United States since arriving on a tourist visa in 1994. He was detained Oct. 28 during a routine check-in with immigration officers in Dallas, but his family said he had applied for asylum and was permitted to live in the country.
An ICE spokesperson said Tarabishi is a self-admitted member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the internationally recognized representative of Palestinians, which his family denies.
Tarabishi is among the tens of thousands of immigrants targeted by the Trump administration’s sweeping mass deportation program. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has aimed for 3,000 arrests a day. More than 70,000 people are in ICE custody, and tactics by immigration officers in Minneapolis have drawn widespread condemnation and led to massive protests.
ICE has said agents are targeting immigrants with criminal backgrounds, but Maher, like the majority arrested in Dallas, did not have a criminal conviction, his family said.
Family members describe Tarabishi as a devoted father and grandfather, a rule follower who never missed an immigration check-in or even got a speeding ticket.
Shahd Arnaout, Maher Tarabish’s daughter-in-law, wipes her tears at a news conference outside of Methodist Mansfield Medical Center on Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, in Mansfield. Arnaout said Tarabish gave his life caring for his children.
Christine Vo / Staff Photographer
When Wael was diagnosed with Pompe disease at a young age, doctors estimated he would not live past age 10. The condition causes progressive muscle weakness, enlarged organs and difficulty breathing. To care for his son, Tarabishi, an electrical engineer, developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the condition.
The two were one another’s best friends. Wael used a feeding tube, but he loved Thanksgiving and found recipes for his dad and family to cook. They gave him tiny bites for him to taste, even though he could not swallow.
Wael loved Dallas sports teams, and the two frequently watched games together. He was particularly devastated after the Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Doncic. Wael also loved Marvel movies, and the family would wait until they were available to stream so Wael could watch with them from his living room.
After his father’s arrest, Wael’s health deteriorated quickly. Three weeks after he was detained, Wael, a U.S. citizen, was rushed to the emergency room with life-threatening sepsis and pneumonia. On Dec. 24, he was raced to the hospital again, this time after his feeding tube became dislodged, causing excruciating pain and his stomach to leak.
At a news conference in late December, the family begged Trump to release Tarabishi so he could care for his son.
“I’m not here to talk about immigration policy. I’m not talking about politics,” Dr. Bilal Piracha, an emergency medicine physician in Coppell and medical advocate for the family, said at the time. “We are talking about mercy. We are talking about humanity.”
Maher Tarabishi and his son, Wael.
Family of Maher Tarabishi
Wael went into surgery to repair his feeding tube earlier this month, and he never woke, Arnaout said. When Tarabishi called his family for an update, they were forced to tell him Wael had died. He refused to believe them.
He wouldn’t die without me, he cried to her. He would have waited for me. They passed the phone around, and he asked each person the same question: Is it true?
Through tears, they told him it was.