Parents arrested in teen abuse case; father was an Iraqi interpreter
for US, by Ann Corcoran 3/27/18
There are dozens of
reports in publications around the world about the case of a missing San
Antonio teen, Maarib al-Hishmawi, now found alive and well in the care of
an unnamed organization that protected her.
She went into hiding
because she didn’t want to go through with an arranged marriage (this is the
United States!) and she reported she suffered physical abuse by her parents
because of her refusal to essentially be sold to a man she didn’t know for
$20,000. (Did I mention that this is the United States!).
I read several stories
on the case and note that some, including the Washington Post, skirted the
subject of just how this family came to live in the US in the first place.
At other reports,
including here at the Daily
Caller, we learn that
Maarib’s father was an interpreter and thus is likely to have been admitted on
a Special
Immigrant Visa.
Faithful reader know
that I have been writing about the huge number of Afghans and Iraqis (with
extended families) which have been arriving in the US for the last ten years
and the pace has actually been increasing, especially from Afghanistan, during
the Trump Administration. (This family obviously arrived during the Obama
Admin.)
Here is the Daily Caller, but if you simply search for
‘Maarib al-Hishmawi’ you will see the story has gone viral.
Authorities arrested a Muslim couple from Iraq
March 23 in San Antonio, Texas, for beating and torturing their daughter after
she refused a forced marriage.
Sixteen-year-old
Maarib Al Hishmawi ran away from Taft High School at the end of January and
remained missing until authorities announced they found her as of March 24,
according to the San Antonio Express-News. When authorities finally located Maarib, she
told them she fled because her parents beat her with broomsticks, poured hot
cooking oil on her, and choked her “almost to the point of unconsciousness.”
These actions were due to Maarib’s refusal of consent to a forced marriage with
an older man.
“This young lady was
subjected to some pretty bad abuse because she didn’t want to be married to
this person,” Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar told The Washington Post.
Maarib’s parents, Abdulah Fahmi Al Hishmawi
and Hamdiyah Sabah Al Hishmawi, arranged in mid-2017 to marry their daughter to
an older man once he agreed to pay the family $20,000, investigators said.
Abdulah became
increasingly agitated during the investigation, blaming a lack of police effort
for his daughter’s continued disappearance and even suggested she was kidnapped
and taken back to the Middle East. Authorities found Maarib, however, in
mid-March in another city. They declined to name the group who sheltered her
during that time.
Abdulah immigrated to the U.S. in 2016 from Iraq with his six children
after having worked for the U.S. forces as an interpreter, he said. Maarib’s
family held two year visas for the U.S. but did not go into detail about what
kind of visas they were, Officials told San Antonio Express-News. [I don’t know what the reference to
two years is, perhaps they have to renew it at that time. I’ll see if I
can find out.—ed]
I should mention that
SIV families come under the care of the usual gang of US State Department
resettlement contractors and are treated as refugees. So, assuming they were
resettled in San Antonio, resettlement agencies headquartered there would know
them. I guess these parents missed the cultural orientation sessions they were
supposedly given.
I expect to see women’s rights activists and
the NOW gang out in force condemning arranged marriages!
Find resettlement
agencies working where you live by clicking here. They can place refugees within a
hundred miles of those offices.
Comments
Sharia
law is unsustainably incompatible with US Law.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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