ICE arrested a community leader; let’s work to bring him home

This article was originally published in The Dallas Morning News on September 29, 2025. You can read the original here.

If you’re at all connected to the North Texas Muslim community, you likely have seen the hashtag #BecauseOfMarwan pop up on your feed. A significant number of Dallas Muslims are sharing impact stories of a man who has been the heart of our community for 30 years.

North Texas knows Marwan Marouf by the results he delivers, not the spotlight he avoids. In every crisis our region has faced, from the pandemic to winter storms, Marouf has been the person organizing meal trains to hospitals and shelters, checking on elders between food drops, connecting volunteers with families who lost power or wages, and keeping our community stitched together.

He is probably the most important leader you have never seen on stage, because his genius and grace have always been behind the scenes. He is the person raising resources without raising his voice. He has served our community for more than 30 years, all while being a loving husband and father of four sons. He is our neighbor. He is our leader.

And today, he is behind bars in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after an act of intimidation that has shocked our community.

On Sept. 22, after dropping off his son at school, Marouf was stopped by immigration agents and taken into custody. As local coverage reported, he was detained the same day his green card application was denied, a decision his legal team says relied on recycled allegations from more than a decade ago. Multiple news outlets have asked ICE for an explanation of the allegations, but ICE has been unresponsive. Marouf was then transferred to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, north of Abilene.

When news of his detention spread, community members began filling timelines with stories, drivers he recruited for a meal run, parents he coached through a crisis, elders he visited without making it an event using the tag #BecauseOfMarwan.

The list of his service is long because his compassion is stubborn. As the Muslim Legal Fund of America notes, Marouf helped found one of the largest Boy Scout troops in the Circle Council, led drug awareness campaigns for teens, volunteered with the Red Cross, and is a certified disaster-relief first-responder.

In early 2024, the Richardson City Council issued a formal proclamation acknowledging the Muslim community’s pandemic relief work under Marouf’s leadership at the Muslim American Society, mobilizing more than 20 local organizations to meet urgent needs.

The language of that proclamation is now a mirror to our moment. When crisis came, this community rose to the occasion. Today, in the face of a different kind of crisis, we are simply asking for our neighbor back.

The legal fight ahead will run through its channels. MLFA has made clear it will challenge the denial of permanent residency in immigration and federal court, arguing that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services mischaracterized charitable work and leaned on outdated allegations. That contest belongs in court, where evidence is tested and rights are adjudicated.

But where Marouf waits for that process, in a far-flung detention center or at home under supervision, is a choice officials can make now. Release pending review is not a political favor. It is an act of common sense and basic decency for someone with deep roots, a stable family and a lifetime of service in this city.

Bluebonnet, where Marouf is being held, has been in the news this year for all the wrong reasons. In April, detainees there spelled SOS with their bodies in a yard to draw attention to conditions and looming deportations, and images of the facility circulated widely as attorneys and advocates raised alarms.

The night after his arrest, the Muslim American Society hosted a standing-room-only meeting to share information and coordinate support. The grief was thick, and so was the resolve.

At stake is the Dallas we keep saying we are: A city that rallies for those in need, that does not allow a lifetime of service to be repaid with an ambush outside of your kid’s school. The agencies involved may be federal, but the consequences are local: A family without a father at the dinner table, a community without the person who quietly makes things work.

Our city’s faith leaders, civic organizations and elected officials, from City Hall to our congressional delegation, should press for Marouf’s immediate release on supervision or humanitarian parole. We should also call for transparency about why a decade-old immigration file was dusted off and weaponized now, and we should insist that public acts of service never be counted against a person’s character.

Marwan Marouf has chosen Dallas, relentlessly, for three decades. Choosing him back is the least we can do. Bring him home, so he can keep doing the work that makes this city, and all of us, better.

Omar Suleiman is the founding president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, and member of the Ethics Center Advisory Board at Southern Methodist University.