A note from his friends
We believe in strong borders. We also believe in Sam.
This is not a page about open borders. Many of us who built it are conservatives. We want our immigration laws enforced. But enforcement should mean something. It should mean removing the people who threaten this country, not the man who got your kids to the school bus every morning.
Sohail Moiz is American in every way but paperwork. He went to our schools, worked our jobs, built homes with Habitat for Humanity, worshipped at Pollok Baptist Church, and stepped in as a father for three boys whose own father walked away. He reported to immigration authorities whenever they asked for twenty years. He was approved for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2014 and again in 2016. He has no criminal record. He has no ties to any gang or cartel.
Deporting Sam would not send him "back" anywhere. He arrived as a small child, and no record was ever established of where he was born or which country he belonged to. There is no proof of national origin. No country has ever claimed him as a citizen, and he holds no passport from anywhere. He is stateless. Removal would take a man from the only country he has ever known and take a father from three young Americans.
The child that crime left behind
- Age 3: his mother dies. Sohail is a toddler.
- Age 5: brought to America. He grows up in Texas classrooms, with a few years in New York and Wichita, Kansas.
- Still a boy: his father is murdered. Kareem Moiz ran a convenience store in San Antonio and was shot and killed there during a robbery. At the time, he was in the middle of the paperwork to make his son a citizen. The family worked with police. The shooter was convicted of capital murder. The case is public record: Domingo Soto v. The State of Texas, 1998. Orphaned in America, Sohail was taken in by his uncle and aunt. No guardian ever finished what his father started.
- Teenager: he grows up fast. He manages the family stores and helps raise three younger cousins, all U.S. citizens. When they later return to America, he helps them settle in and find work.
- Adult: he works and gives back. Compass Bank. A managerial role in the early days of Pretty Robes, a Texas e-commerce company that now employs about 22 people. Years of volunteering across Dallas. Today he runs the Kountry Store in Pollok, Texas, where the regulars know him by name.
- 2006 onward: he does everything asked of him. Released from immigration custody in 2006, he wears a GPS ankle monitor and reports to ICE for years. A friend remembers an ICE agent crying as she fastened the monitor, knowing he had grown up here since childhood. DACA approved in 2014 and 2016.
- Late 2016: he becomes a dad. He meets Britney Beaumont, a nurse, and her three sons, ages 9, 8 and 6. Their father was absent. Sohail stepped in. Britney is now his wife.
- September 30, 2026: a brake light. A traffic stop leads to ICE detention. He is now held at the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas.
