On 16 June, a Palestinian family of five arrived in Buenos Aires after a long journey, delayed first by their departure from the occupied West Bank, then routed through Amman, Istanbul, and Sao Paulo.

They carried all the required documentation for entry: tourist visas, a formal letter of invitation, police clearance certificates, proof of health insurance, hotel bookings, and return tickets. None of it mattered.

The family, Christian Palestinians: Sandy Bassam Hanna Abu Farha, her parents, and two siblings, had not just the necessary documentation but return tickets dated for 25 June.

According to Pagina 12 and Tiempo Argentino, the family was held for over 24 hours in the immigration section of Ezeiza International Airport. What followed was an exercise in procedural opacity.

Shortly upon landing at the airport, they were stopped and directed to secondary screening. The requests that followed were standard enough: hotel bookings, travel insurance, proof of departure. All were provided.

Yet, they were, questioned, misled, and deported under conditions that Sandy Abu Farha would later describe as having “zero human rights.”

At the airport, the family says, that they were presented with documents written entirely in Spanish, none of which they understood or translated, and told to sign. These papers turned out to be facilitating their deportation.

“I asked a lady like what we are signing on,” Sandy Abu Farha told TRT World.

“She said ‘It’s okay. It’s just a paper that says that you will be allowed into an area to rest and eat until we check your visa, something from the embassy.”

But the document, written in Spanish, was no formality.

It was only when the Palestinian ambassador arrived sixteen hours into their detention that the truth came out. It was, in fact, a deportation order that labelled them “fake tourists.”

By then, the hospitality promised to them had dissolved into a system of denial: requests for food, medicine, warm clothing was refused.

“No one from them came to talk to us to explain the situation. We were treated like criminals,” Sandy says. “We didn’t have human rights.”

In a joint statement, the five family members wrote: “Not even the intervention of the Palestinian Ambassador resolved the situation. The authorities contradicted each other, denied transparency, and prevented us from accessing legal assistance.”

Argentine attorney Uriel Biondi submitted a writ of habeas corpus to the Federal Criminal and Correctional Court of Lomas de Zamora in an effort to halt the deportation, but the petition was ultimately rejected.

Apartheid at home, apartheid abroad

As a Palestinian, movement is never a given but a negotiation, every journey subject to permits, checkpoints, and control. Even travel abroad requires navigating Israeli authority, a lived reminder that apartheid is not just a structure but a daily logistics of restriction.

In one particular moment, a security officer approached Sandy Abu Farha directly. She had attempted to speak. His response: “You’re the Palestinian, right?” Then: “No one wants to talk to you.”

“It’s my right,” she recalls insisting. “You fooled us into signing this paper to rest. You’re not even letting us rest.”

Local media later reported that an “international alert” had been issued against her father, though Sandy Abu Farha insists it was a case of mistaken identity that had long since been resolved. The family has travelled freely through Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in recent years without incident.

She is not unaware of the geopolitical tensions she navigates. Her father runs “one of the largest souvenir shops in Bethlehem,” she adds. She herself manages a prominent tour company, specialising in pilgrimages across the occupied Palestinian territories and Hebron.

They indicated that the purpose of their trip to Argentina “was to meet with professional partners and expand cooperation with religious tourism agencies,” Tiempo reported.

Argentine consular officials in Tel Aviv had approved their visas after reviewing bank statements, police clearances, insurance, and travel plans, she says.

Suspicion, securitisation and support for Israel

The incident marks a departure from Argentina’s long-standing tradition of welcoming immigrants, as President Javier Milei’s administration moved to consolidate broader powers over immigration.

A decree was issued in May expanding the discretion of border officials to deny entry and deport foreign nationals with minimal judicial oversight.

The measure was, what the government framed as the need to address “chaos and abuse by many opportunists who are far from coming to this country in an honest way” as per the presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorn.

The shift in immigration policy is not isolated. 

On July 12 last year, Argentine President Javier Milei proscribed Hamas a terrorist organisation and ordered a freeze on its financial assets in a move seen as part of his broader effort to align Argentina closely with the United States and Israel.

That alignment deepened on 11 June, just five days before the Palestinian family’s ordeal, as Milei announced plans to relocate Argentina’s embassy in Israel from Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem by 2026. Speaking before the Israeli Knesset, he said: “Argentina stands by you in these difficult days.”

In the same speech, Milei criticised the broader international community, accusing it of being "manipulated by terrorists” and of “turning victims into perpetrators," amid Israel’s imposed mass starvation in Gaza and the ongoing genocide proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

What happened in Buenos Aires was not merely a bureaucratic error. It was, in the words of one of its victims, a moment of revelation: a family, carrying valid documents, treated as a threat on the basis of nationality.