Deportation

[commonsense]

I thought i should share this with my people. I know it is long, but very interesting.

 

THE NATIONAL POST: From Seattle Yacht Club to Somalian hellhole

Post-Sept. 11 mass deportation sees men banished to a country they barely know

 

By Brian Hutchinson – March 9, 2002

Until recently, Fuad Hassan Ismail lived an ordinary life. His days were simple: He awoke early, ate a quick breakfast and drove to the Seattle Yacht Club, where he performed janitorial and security work and helped with the landscaping.

Born in Yemen to parents of Somali origin, Ismail was not an American citizen, but he had permission to work in the United States. By all accounts, he was a model employee at the yacht club. He was well-liked and had never missed a shift since landing his job there in 1999.

"I was working, paying taxes, saving money for a house," says Ismail, 41. "I was just like everybody else."

Like everybody else, except that owing to a former drug habit, he had been classified by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) as a criminal alien and was therefore subject to deportation whenever the U.S. authorities saw fit.

Early last month, on a cool and cloudy Friday morning, Ismail was putting in a regular shift at the yacht club when three INS agents approached.

"I was in the parking lot, and they came up to me with a warrant and arrested me," Ismail says. "The club's general manager came outside to try and help me. But they took me away and put me in a detention facility. They wouldn't tell me why. The next day, they said they were deporting me to Mogadishu. Mogadishu? I couldn't believe it. I'd never even been to Mogadishu."

He had heard of it, however. Made notorious by the film Black Hawk Down, Somalia's capital is among the world's most dangerous cities. It is a lawless, wartorn place, rife with violence and kidnappings. Mercenary warlords command most of the territory and their troops clash frequently with members of the country's unstable "transitional" government. In truth, there is no government, just anarchy.

Two days after his arrest in Seattle, Ismail and several other men of Somali origin were loaded on to a U.S. government jet, one in a fleet of aircraft used to transport people in federal custody. Ismail had in his possession US$40, the clothes on his back and little else.

From Seattle, the transport jet flew to several different cities in the U.S. southwest, where more Somalis were boarded. The airplane then flew to Buffalo, N.Y., where the group -- 20 men and one woman -- was transported to a large facility used to detain people in INS custody.

The following day, the prisoners were moved to a U.S. air base in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and boarded on to a Boeing 757 private charter bound for Amsterdam. Their feet were shackled and each prisoner had one arm tied to their seat.

They were joined by six Somali citizens removed that day from various detention facilities in Canada, the National Post has learned.

According Rejean Cantlen, a spokesman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, four of the six Somalis from Canada were serious criminals who had resisted removal in the past, sometimes violently.

He would not provide details, such as their names or the nature of their transgressions. The other two were not criminals, but were in violation of Canada's Immigration Act. People in that category include failed refugee claimants and those whose visitor permits have expired.

The Boeing 757 left Niagara Falls at three o'clock in the afternoon, Feb. 11. Fifteen private security officers and one medical doctor were also on board.

There were no U.S. or Canadian immigration officials on the flight, which is unusual in such deportation cases.

"We didn't send our officers to Somalia because of the situation there," Cantlen said. He refused to elaborate.

He did not have to: Somalia is one of the most dangerous places on Earth. The country is suspected of harbouring Muslim terrorists, including members of the al-Qaeda network. Neither Canada nor the United States maintain a diplomatic presence in Somalia, and both governments warn its citizens against travelling there.

"Canadians there should leave," notes the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. "The security situation is dangerous, particularly in ... Mogadishu. ... Canadians are at risk of kidnapping, murder or arrest without notice or apparent cause.... There is no national government in Somalia to offer general security or police protection.... Fighting continues among local militias and clans, and all forms of violent crime, including murder, kidnapping, looting and banditry, are common."

After a brief stop in Amsterdam, the Mogadishu-bound prisoners were flown to the small African republic of Djibouti, on the Gulf of Aden.

They spent one night there, crammed into a single jail cell with no toilet. The next morning, they were loaded into yet another aircraft, this one of Russian origin and piloted by a Russian crew.

Their last stop was a small airport just outside Mogadishu. The group was herded by Somali soldiers into a bus and driven into the heart of the city. Trailing them were soldiers driving trucks with 50-calibre machine guns mounted on their roofs.

In downtown Mogadishu, the prisoners were pulled from the bus, released from their shackles and abandoned, left to fend for themselves.

Those with relatives in the area quickly scurried to safety. But Ismail had nowhere to go. His parents, of course, were Somali, but after leaving Yemen, he had lived in Somalia only a few years before entering the United States on a student visa in 1984. He knew almost nothing about the country, except that it was extremely dangerous.

Mohammed Yusuf, 22, found himself in a similar predicament. Born in Somalia, he had moved to the United States with his family in 1982. Three years ago he was convicted of theft, and had been languishing in a Louisiana jail when he was deported with Ismail to Mogadishu, a city he does not know.

"He's in the middle of a war zone," says his father, Yusuf Farah, from his home in San Diego. "He is from a minority tribe. The [ruling clan in Mogadishu] will kill him. Does the American government care? No. They kidnapped my son. I didn't even know he'd been deported. I was told nothing."

Almost a month has passed since Ismail and Yusuf were dropped in Mogadishu. For the first three weeks, they shared a shabby hotel room with five other deportees. The rent: 10¢ a night. Most of the men have now scattered. One of them, Jama Jama Jaffar, crossed the Somalia border and is safe in Kenya. "We think he's safe," says Jaffar's brother, Awalah, from his home in Seattle. "It hurts that he was just sent away like that."

Ismail has found accommodation in a private home and is planning to escape Somalia soon. In the meantime, his situation remains dire. "I'm in Hell," Ismail said this week, from a telephone in downtown Mogadishu. "There is gunfire all around me. There is fighting in the streets. I really don't want to be here."

Meanwhile, he is struggling to blend into the crowd. "I arrived here dressed like an American, talking like an American," he explains. "I feel like a target. I'm a stranger here. I don't belong. I don't know why I'm here. It's mind-boggling. This isn't my home. It never has been."

 

[blue]

I've heard this before. It is a sad story. I feel sorry for all those deported. Please be carefull don't get involved in anything criminal.

[commonsense]

Blue- there is actually more to the story but i didn't want ppl to get tired of reading.

 

If anyone would like the rest of the story let me know.

[Hibo]

CommonSense I do! I loved readin dat although it wasn't funny, I could imagine what they were goin through (perhaps on a much smaller scale)

 

One should think they'd be happy 2 c their country, but I wouldn't dare go there without my parents even though I would kill (not literally) to go there Insha Allah.

 

But under those circumstances-Hell No! Without being able to inform ur family nor ur friends, dat must be terrible!

 

It saddens me greatly when I hear of Somalis who commit crime! The reason u guys left Somalia in the first place was to escape human crime & injustice, why would any1 wanna carry on doin stupid things like dat.

 

Although I appreciate dat mistakes can happen, we should all learn from them.

 

One should think they'd be happy 2 c their country, but I wouldn't dare go there without my parents even though I would kill (not literally) to go there Insha Allah.

 

May Allah

[Hibo]

Uuups I 4got 2 complete the ducu!

 

May Allah (SWT) help & guide these people in de way He knows best. & May He ease their sufferin! Ameen

[commonsense]

Ex-Dane here is the rest

 

 

Fuad Ismail spent the first 18 years of his life in Yemen. During the early 1980s, he moved to rural Somalia with his parents, but left in 1984, and entered the United States on a student visa. After a few months in Galveston, Tex., he moved to the state of Washington, where he attended Skagit Valley College. He was an average student; according to his transcript, he had a modest 2.94 grade point average, but earned top marks in such courses as developmental English, international relations and introduction to ethics.

After graduating in 1986, he bounced around the state, taking odd jobs and living hand to mouth. He also began using drugs and alcohol. "I was a drug addict," he says.

In 1994, he was convicted for unlawful use of drug paraphernalia and jailed. In September that year, an immigration judge in Seattle ordered him to be deported to Somalia, a country he barely knew and where he had no family. Ismail appealed the judge's order; the appeal was dismissed in January, 1996.

In November, 1998, Ismail was released from jail under an "order of supervision," which meant he was free to move about the country but was still considered a criminal and eligible for immediate deportation. People in such circumstances are often allowed to remain in the United States for years, as long as they do not break the law and they follow INS instructions. But the axe can fall at any time.

Ismail was required to check in with INS in Seattle every month. He also entered a six-month rehabilitation program at the Salvation Army. "He was determined to get better and he did," says Samuel Southard, a Salvation Army Major who befriended Mr. Ismail in 1998. "He is one of the most gentle, religious people I've ever met."

Within months, Ismail was made manager of the Salvation Army's "clean and sober house," a transition residence for recovered addicts. He landed his job at the yacht club, and in less than three years had socked away US$30,000 in a bank account. "I was doing great," Ismail says.

Then the INS came calling.

- - -

Russ Bergeron is the INS's chief press officer. Reached at his office in Washington, D.C., he sounded utterly unfamiliar with last month's large-scale deportation mission to Somalia. (The story has received almost no attention in the Western media.)

Even so, it did not surprise him. "Deportation movements take place all the time," he told me. "They're often planned weeks, if not months, in advance. Charter flights are certainly not unprecedented. Somalia does not have routine commercial air service. Sometimes, we'll wait until there are a significant number of people to be deported to one country, and then they will be removed together. This sounds like a rather routine removal process."

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, passed in 1996, allows the INS to immediately deport non-U.S. citizens guilty of felonies or crimes of "moral turpitude," including drunk driving and domestic abuse. But Bergeron could not, however, recall a similar event in which 27 Somalis were deported in shackles and dumped en masse in the middle of Mogadishu.

Last year, 47 Somalis were deported from the United States. In 1999, 30 Somalis were deported. I asked Bergeron if the growing number of removals has anything to do with the heightened terrorist concerns after Sept. 11. He bristled at the suggestion.

"I have no information whatsoever that that has any sense of credibility," he said. "It's ludicrous."

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the joint removal at Niagara Falls was the fourth such operation organized by Canadian and U.S. officials, all since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Three previous operations involved removing even larger groups of immigration violators, to the West African nation of Nigeria.

"In my opinion," says the Salvation Army's Southard, "Fuad was deported because of Sept. 11." Southard has wired his friend enough cash to purchase a temporary visa to the United Arab Emirates. "If he can get to the Emirates, he can access his bank account in Seattle," Southard says.

Even so, he doubts he will ever see Ismail again, because he is no longer welcome in the United State.

"It wasn't illegal to send him to Mogadishu, even if the INS people wouldn't even venture there themselves," Southard says. "Fuad had run out of appeals. But I'm positive that what the INS did was immoral and unjust."

He was a criminal, counters INS press officer Bergeron. But the same cannot be said for all of the deportees. Two of the six Somalis removed from Canada have not been convicted of any crime.

No matter. It is "a normal situation for [deportees] to be repatriated to their home country," says Bergeron. "Our responsibility is to turn them over to the legal authorities there. We did that. If the Somali authorities chose to abandon these people, well, you'll have to ask them why."

 

[Hibo]

A New York-based human rights body has expressed concern over the large number of detainees in the United States of America following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

 

Executive director of Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR) Mr Michael Posner termed the situation a crisis which needed urgent attention.

 

He said non-citizens were being detained in different places without access to lawyers.

 

Posner said the US was detaining hundreds of non-citizens on insecurity grounds and expressed fears that Kenyans and Sudanese could be in the list of the detainees.

 

The detainees also include those seeking political asylum in the US, he said. Posner was speaking to the Press after the official opening of a refugee workshop for Kenyan and Ugandan MPs at a Mombasa hotel.

 

The director said the US has not been fair on the issue as the detainees cannot even access lawyers.

 

"As a human rights committee, we have tried to get more information on the hundreds of detainees for legal redress but we have failed in the mission," said Posner.

 

Posner said the US government was not willing to release names or number of those being detained on security grounds.

 

He added that the rights of the detainees have been violated by the US government officials.

 

 

 

 

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