Four years ago, members of the Ibrahim family sat in a Dallas immigration courtroom and calmly cataloged the years of violence in their Palestinian village: the deaths of children, the bombs and beatings. But now, denied asylum and confined for a third consecutive month inside a pair of Texas detention centers, they just want to go home.

Any home, in any country, will do. Even if it means returning to the land they fled.

So far, however, Salaheddin Ibrahim, his pregnant wife, Hanan, and four of their five children remain in a legal and geopolitical limbo. And their plight has drawn sharp criticism from civil rights activists and intensified debate about the decision to detain immigrant children in a facility near Austin.

TOM FOX / DMN

Free because she was born in the U.S., Zahra Ibrahim holds a picture of her sisters, (from left) Rodaina, Faten and Maryam, who are in detention along with their parents and brother. Zahra lives with her uncle Ahmad Ibrahim in northeast Dallas.

The Ibrahims were denied asylum and ordered deported in 2003 before being apprehended at their Richardson apartment during a November immigration raid.

But they have been unable to secure the right to cross into their Palestinian homeland through Jordan or Israel, their attorneys say, leaving them with no place to go. Lawyers have sent letters to 54 countries, including the Vatican, asking each to accept the family. They have also planned a series of legal challenges, many to be filed this week, to win their release.

"It really would be a tragedy to send the family back into such a lawless situation, but they would rather go anywhere than be split apart ... and detained," said New York immigration attorney Theodore Cox, who has been retained by the family.

"Their first choice is to get out of detention. If that means going back to the West Bank and Gaza, they'll accept it."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Carl Rusnok said Wednesday that he could not comment specifically on the Ibrahim case or deportation plans. The Ibrahims were among a number of "fugitive aliens and immigration status violators" apprehended in November raids for failure to comply with orders to leave the United States.

Mr. Ibrahim is being held in a detention center in Haskell, near Abilene. His wife and four of their children – ages 5, 8, 14 and 15 – are in the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility near Austin, one of two facilities in the nation dedicated to the detention of non-Mexican immigrant families and children.

Another Ibrahim child, 3-year-old, Zahra, who was born in the U.S. and is a citizen, is in the care of a relative in far northeast Dallas.

Before the opening of the 512-bed Hutto facility in May 2006, families apprehended were often released with notices to appear before an immigration judge.

Rita Zawaideh, chairwoman of the Seattle-based Arab American Community Coalition, says the Ibrahim case is about the fate of hundreds of children now facing detention. The coalition is helping fund the family's legal team, led in part by Mr. Cox, New York lawyer Joshua Bardavid and Ralph Isenberg, a Dallas real-estate developer who waged a high-profile battle with immigration officials last year to keep his Chinese wife in the country.

"We are trying to do this for all children," Ms. Zawaideh said. "No child should be arrested. No child should be imprisoned in this way. This is the U.S.A. They are not rapists. They are not murderers. It is morally wrong to imprison children."

Unaccompanied children, mostly from Latin America, are housed across the country in a series of less-restrictive shelters built in recent years under the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Minors accompanied by families, however, now face more traditional detention settings. Williamson County commissioners renewed the Hutto detention center lease this week.

"It's basically to try to keep families together while at the same time we enforce immigration laws," Mr. Rusnok said of the logic behind the center.

Immigration officials have defended Hutto, calling it an effective and humane way to keep families from skipping immigration hearings. They note features like schooling with state-certified teachers and a 2,000-plus book general library.

Critics paint a starkly different picture.

"I haven't been disturbed by something this much in a very long time. It's very disturbing to find children inside a prison," said Barbara Hines, a veteran immigration lawyer and law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ms. Hines, who is part of a group of advocates trying to end the detention of minors at the center, says a more humane setting should be found.

"The legal issue to me is whether or not ... there are less-restrictive alternatives to achieve government goals than detaining children," she said.

The plight of the Ibrahims began in 2001 when the family fled the West Bank town of Alfandaqumiya, passing through Jordan en route to the United States on visitors' visas. There was Salaheddin, his wife, Hanan, son Hamzeh and daughters Faten, Rodaina and Maryam. The family filed for asylum in 2002, claiming persecution due to persistent violence in Palestinian areas.

But immigration Judge Cary H. Copeland denied the claim in January 2003, questioning whether the harassment and discrimination detailed by Mr. Ibrahim rose to the necessary level of persecution.

The judge ordered the Ibrahims deported, but they continued to live in Richardson, their children attending public schools, until November when immigration agents raided their apartment. To return to the West Bank, they would have to pass through Jordan or Israel. The family does not have a current Jordanian passport, and Israel traditionally has not allowed Palestinians to return home through the country.

"He was never on welfare. He paid his taxes for five years. He is a good man. I'm really proud to have a brother like that," said Ahmad Ibrahim, Salaheddin's brother.

Ahmad, who has been a U.S. citizen for 12 years, said he finds it difficult to comprehend what has happened to his brother's family.

"To me, it's really an indecent, inhumane thing for ICE to do. It's un-American," he said. "It's definitely criminal. Putting a 5-year-old child in jail for three months is a crime."

He said his parents, who are still living in the West Bank, don't understand what has happened to his brother's family.

"My mother doesn't believe they are in jail. She asks me, did they have a car accident? Are they dead? They believe something bad happened. But they don't believe they are in jail."

Ahmad, who has become the caretaker for Zahra, said he would be willing to care for his brother's other four children if they were released from custody.

On Wednesday, Zahra scurried throughout Ahmad's apartment, playing with a cellphone and a fax machine.

When asked if she knows where her mother is, she replied: "At the doctor."

"What country in the world jails children?" Ahmad asked. "These children have not committed any crime; the parents have not committed any crime. But it is like they are serving a sentence. They took them to deport them and they can't be deported, so they are locked away."

Dallas immigration lawyer John Wheat Gibson, who represented the family in the previous asylum proceedings, has filed to reopen their case.

Mr. Gibson said he believes the Ibrahims' asylum claims still have merit and have gotten stronger in the four years since Judge Copeland denied their application. He noted that fighting had intensified in the occupied territories, not only between Palestinians and Israelis but also between rival Palestinian groups.

"The whole family and especially that boy, Hamzeh, are in danger if they go back," Mr. Gibson said.

Ahmad said that at this point all the family wants to do is get out of detention, even if it means leaving the country and returning to their homeland.

He said he did not want the family to become involved in the controversy surrounding the Hutto facility and whether it should be open or not.

"I really don't care what happens to that jail," Ahmad said. "We're simple people. We can't solve the problems of America."

Mr. Isenberg said this week that he was drawn to the Ibrahim case out of concern for the children.

"We have taken innocent children and submitted them to the worst possible human condition, which is outlawed by the U.N. and outlawed by 50 states in this nation," he said.

Others, however, are more supportive of ICE's decision to detain families.

"You can't simply release people and say, 'Please come back for your hearing in six months or a year,' " said Ira Melman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "That just doesn't work."

Mr. Melman said he wants the most humane facilities possible to house children but said they should not be used as pretexts for families to stay in the country illegally.

Children are not human shields," he said. "Just because you drag your kid along illegally doesn't mean we can't touch you."

Ms. Zawaideh, who was born in Jordan, said she hoped the multiple legal strategies on behalf of the Ibrahims might help other Palestinians who are similarly suspended in a legal limbo.

In 2004, the same New York lawyers involved in the Ibrahim case successfully won the release of Salim Yassir, a Palestinian who spent four years in detention with no country to return to.

"Israel doesn't take Palestinians back. Jordan won't take them," Ms. Zawaideh said. "You have a family without a country and the only thing you can think of is keeping them locked up?"

Ahmad Ibrahim said he still is paying rent on the Richardson apartment where his brother's family lived, hoping for the day they return. Earlier this week he picked up mail from the apartment and saw a letter addressed to one of the detained girls.

When he opened it he realized the girl had written a letter to herself from detention.

"I guess that was all she could think of doing, because there's nothing else to do there," he said. "She just wrote things like, "How are you doing?" and "How was school today?' "

Another letter arrived recently, this one from the Richardson school district. The letter was to inform Salaheddin that his son Hamzeh had been absent from or tardy for classes at Berkner High School for 35 days since Aug. 14. The absences, the letter said, could make the parents guilty of a Class C misdemeanor, "contributing to truancy."

Staff writer Dianne Solís contributed to this story.

• Salaheddin Ibrahim, 37, Richardson businessman who sought political asylum

• Hanan Ibrahim, 34, homemaker and mother of five who is four months pregnant

• Hamzeh Ibrahim, 15, a sophomore at Berkner High School

• Rodaina Ibrahim, 14; school and grade unknown

• Maryam Ibrahim, 8; school and grade unknown

• Faten Ibrahim, 5; not enrolled in school

• Zahra Ibrahim, 3; born in the U.S., she is a citizen and is being cared for by an uncle in Far Northeast Dallas