Rolling Plains Archive: Mahmoud Alafyouny

Clicking through internet references that connect Rolling Plains prision to immigration detention, we ran across the painful story of Mahmoud Alafyouny. Fort Worth Weekly called his experience an “American Purgatory.” After more than two years in prison, Alafyouny was eventually deported. The story of Alafyouny’s plight drew sympathetic treatment from federal security screeners at TSA, because that’s where his wife Rae worked. Mahmoud and Rae were married in 2000, a full decade after Mahmoud’s college years in Jordan where he allegedly raised money for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). That was enough to tag him terrorist and get him deported under the Patriot Act, despite major media attention. As a result, Alafyouny’s case goes down in history as one of the clear cases of post-9/11 discrimination.–gm