A federal immigration panel ruled that escalating violence in the Palestinian territories since Hamas came to power was grounds to reconsider the asylum request of a Palestinian family who remain in Texas detention centers while awaiting deportation.

The order issued Friday by the federal Board of Immigration Appeals comes more than two years after the Ibrahim family's initial request for asylum was denied. Joshua Bardavid, a lawyer for the family, said he expects the Ibrahims to be released and reunited within a week to three weeks now that the case is being reopened.

In their ruling, the board said the family presented sufficient evidence that the Palestinian territories are controlled by the militant Islamic group Hamas, which the United States considers a terrorist group.

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More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in internal violence since Hamas, which rejects Israel's right to exist, won parliamentary elections in January 2005 and ousted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' more moderate Fatah movement from power.

It is clear that conditions have changed in the Palestinian territories, the order stated.

Immigration officers arrested the Ibrahim family on Nov. 2 during a raid on their Dallas-area apartment and they have been held awaiting deportation since then.

Salaheddin Mahd Ibrahim, 37, is being held at a jail in Haskell, near Abilene. His wife Hanan, 34, who is five months pregnant, has been incarcerated at a detention center in Taylor, Texas, along with four of her children, ages 5 to 15.

The family also has another child, 3-year-old Zahra, who is a U.S. citizen because she was born in the United States, and is living with an uncle in the Dallas area.

We're actually floating on air, Bardavid said. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We're thrilled for the Ibrahims.

Bardavid said he did not know how long the family's new petition for asylum would take to be resolved.

The Ibrahims, who formerly lived in the West Bank city of Nablus, arrived with temporary Jordanian passports and visas in September 2001. They applied for asylum shortly after, citing the violence in their homeland. But a judge denied their petition in January 2003 and ordered their deportation in an order that became final in August 2004.

Before Friday's order, lawyers for the Ibrahims said the family was willing to accept deportation in order to be reunited but said they had nowhere to go. The family has applied to more than 50 countries for asylum.

Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Dallas declined to comment on the case, citing the pending litigation.