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WEST CHESTER TWP.: Boehner to help immigrant family
Man fears for the safety of his wife after she was deported.
By Cameron Fullam

Staff Writer

WEST CHESTER TWP. — A West Chester Twp. woman deported to Pakistan in March hopes she will be home in time to watch her 16-year-old son earn his Eagle Scout award next year.

U.S. House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp., has committed his assistance to make Fatima Raziuddin’s wish a possibility.

“Please be assured that I will remain involved with your case until it is resolved,” Boehner recently wrote to Razi Dinn, Raziuddin’s husband.

Dinn, who has not seen his wife since she was handcuffed, jailed and deported four months ago, said he is encouraged by Boehner’s willingness to help.

“He is a powerful man, and it is nice to know he is going to stay with our case,” he said. “Let’s see what he can do.”

After living illegally in the United States for 18 years, Raziuddin was deported for not following through with a 1990 voluntary departure agreement.

She came to the United States in 1988 on a student visa. After marrying Dinn later that year, she took a part-time job at a Popeye’s Chicken restaurant in Texas.

In 1990, a judge ruled that her job was a violation of her student visa. If Raziuddin agreed to voluntarily leave the United States, she was told, she would be allowed to re-enter after six months. But the births of her two sons, Shabbir, 16, and Abbas, 14, and the onset of thyroid cancer prevented her from holding to the agreement, Dinn said.

After Dinn became a citizen in 1994, Raziuddin made a series of failed attempts to readjust her status. Earlier this year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services accepted Raziuddin’s application for a green card, pending clearance from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When she arrived at the ICE office in Columbus, Raziuddin was handcuffed by immigration officials, sent to a jail near Toledo for five weeks and then deported to Pakistan.

“I just came home without my wife, and that was the last time I saw her,” Dinn said.

According to the couple’s lawyer, she now has a 10-year bar from returning, but could apply for a waiver, said Greg Palmore, an ICE spokesman.

Immigrant applicants are eligible for a waiver if they are the spouse or child of a permanent resident or citizen and the enforcement of the 10-year wait would cause an extreme hardship to the citizen or permanent resident. However, “there is no guarantee it will be granted,” Palmore said.

Dinn, who works as a manager at a Frisch’s restaurant, said he hopes the situation can be quickly resolved because he fears for the health and safety of his wife.

Raziuddin is living in her country of birth in a fourth-floor apartment without air conditioning with her sister and seven others in Karachi, Pakistan.

The water must be boiled before use and the electricity goes off every day for hours at a time.

Also, the building is only 250 feet away from the park where on April 11, a suicide bomber killed 57 and injured 80.

Raziuddin recently recovered from a monthlong bout with malaria and she has had difficulty obtaining the thyroid medication she has taken since her cancer surgery in 1991, she has written to her family.

Contact this reporter at (513) 755-5127 or cfullam@coxohio.com