It took Samer and his Christian family seven months to escape persecution and reach the US but Donald Trump suggested they might be Isis members. Now they are held in separate centres with no release in sight, he tells the Guardian

Throughout the seven months it took Samer and his family to make their way from Syria to the United States, he told himself that the risk and cost would be worth it they could swap their war-ravaged homeland for what he believed was a “land of opportunity, hope and peace”.

But the family’s arrival in the US has proved more stressful than the journey: days after they reached Texas they found themselves the unwitting subject of a national debate over potential terrorist infiltration.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said that Samer, his wife and two sons – aged two and five – could be the embodiment of America’s “worst nightmare”. Donald Trump speculated that the family, who are Christian, could be members of Islamic State.

A month later, Samer and his family are still being held in indefinitely in separate detention centres – and his belief in America as a beacon for asylum seekers is dimming by the day.

“My very small children are in prison,” said Samer, speaking by phone from an immigration detention centre near San Antonio. “I had no idea that the political climate was so against Syrian refugees. If I had known that it was so terrible here I wouldn’t have brought my family.”



In his first press interview, Samer said he was struggling to reconcile his perception of the US as a Christian nation of immigrants with his own predicament. Now he fears his family will not be released and reunited by Christmas.

“I definitely thought America would accept me,” said Samer, who has been identified by a pseudonym to protect family member.



Speaking through an interpreter, he appeared mystified by the idea that he could be considered a threat. “We are the ones running away from war,” he told the Guardian.



It was Samer’s bad luck to arrive just days after 130 people were killed in coordinated gun and bomb attacks in Paris. Although all of the attackers identified so far were European nationals, US politicians suggested that terrorists could be posing as Syrian refugees in order to infiltrate the country.

As national politicians questioned the calibre of the federal government’s vetting procedures for refugees, at least 30 state governors – including Texas governor Greg Abbott said Syrian refugees would no longer be welcome.

Earlier this month, Texas officials stepped up their efforts to block Syrian refugees by suing an aid agency and the federal government.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest US Border Patrol agent Joe Gutierrez stands on the Texas side of the Rio Grande River, beneath the McAllen-Hidalgo bridge that links Hidalgo, Texas, to Reynosa, Mexico. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA/Corbis

Samer, who is being detained separately from his wife and sons, said that officials have not given him a clear explanation why they are still holding the family, along with two other Syrian Christian families who arrived at the Texas border around the same time. Until Wednesday, Samer had not even been allowed to speak to his wife by telephone

Their month-long detention is despite a July ruling by a federal judge in California who ordered that mothers with children should be released as quickly from detention facilities, which migrants and their advocates and migrants have described as prisons. Texas officials are now considering licensing the facilities as “childcare centres”.

Jonathan Ryan, an attorney for the families and executive director of RAICES, which offers legal aid to immigrants, said that background checks and interviews to determine a “credible fear [of persecution or torture]” have shown that they do not pose a security threat.

But correspondence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indicates they have not been released on parole because they had failed to establish they are “not a danger to the community or US security” and because of an additional exceptional factor: “law enforcement interest”.

An ICE spokesperson said: “[ICE] makes custody determinations on a case-by-case basis. ICE is currently evaluating these cases.”

Speaking at a naturalisation ceremony in Washington this week, Barack Obama drew a direct comparison between the plight of Syrians escaping civil war, and Jews who fled Nazi Germany.

But Ryan said that Samer’s situation underlined the gap between the administration’s rhetoric and the reality of continuing the policy of family detention for people “fleeing the worst violence on earth”.



He argued that the Syrians who came to Texas are victims of a hostile – and hysterical – political climate. “There’s no doubt in my mind that these families are in a dungeon of public perception completely divorced from reality and logic,” he said.

“They have followed every rule, completed every step in the process that results in asylum seekers being released to live with their families and told to report to court, but they are being treated differently … the saddest thing about these cases is that these people fled from a government that singled them out because of who they were – Christians. They came to our country seeking protection only to find that we are doing the same thing because of their national origin.”

Samer was unwilling to speak in detail about his own story, for fear of endangering relatives. “The situation was really, really bad, very dangerous. I had to get my family out,” he said.

But he described handing over property worth $50,000 to a people smuggler to enable the seven-month journey that included flying from Beirut to Mexico – an experience he described as “much more comfortable than being in detention in Texas.”

Their arrival at the border in Laredo was first reported by the rightwing website Breitbart News, which said they were “caught” on 16 November. Soon after, Trump tweeted his theory that they were Islamic State infiltrators.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Eight Syrians were just caught on the southern border trying to get into the U.S. ISIS maybe? I told you so. WE NEED A BIG & BEAUTIFUL WALL!

But a statement from the Department of Homeland Security statement made it clear that the families had “presented themselves” to US authorities.

Samer said his family reached the checkpoint in a taxi. “I wasn’t trying to sneak in,” he said.

They had hoped their asylum claim would be swiftly processed and they would be released to family in another state. Instead they were summarily detained.

Since then, Samer has not been allowed to talk to his wife and children. Language and cultural barriers have left him isolated from his fellow detainees who are mostly from central America.

“If my children stay in prison I will go crazy,” he said. “All I want is for my family to spend the holidays together.”