Authorities want to sedate man during deportation
By ANABELLE GARAY
The Associated Press

DALLAS -- Federal immigration authorities have asked a judge to give them permission to sedate a Lufkin restaurant owner before putting him on an airplane for deportation to Albania.

In August, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tried to put Rrustem Neza, a 32-year-old asylum seeker, on a plane at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, but he resisted and shouted so much that airline representatives would not allow him to board. According to court papers dated Oct. 1, a physician from the U.S. Public Health Service would administer the sedative, and a medical worker would accompany Neza during the flight.

"Unless this Court enjoins Neza from any further unlawful resistance to his removal and authorizes ICE, through PHS, to use medical means ... it will be impossible to execute the final order of removal," the court document states.

Deportees have been medicated before, but it's rare, ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said. "We ask for this option only when the alien in question may present a danger to himself or to others," he said Monday.

Dallas attorney John Wheat Gibson, who represents Neza, said Monday that he plans to oppose the sedation request.

According to Gibson, Neza told a crowd in the Albanian city of Tropoje the names of the men he said had killed Azem Hajdari, who had organized a student movement against the Communist Party. Albanian police pursued Neza, his brothers and their cousins while they tried to flee.

His cousins were fatally shot while on the run. Neza eventually made it to the United States, settling with his family in Lufkin. Neza's 6-year-old son was born in this country, and he and his brother Xhemal Neza own restaurants in East Texas. "Mr. Neza will get off the airplane in Albania too drugged to run from the killers who will be waiting," Gibson wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

After ICE agents tried to deport Neza in August, they reported that Neza grabbed a cellphone from an officer's hand after being told he could no longer use it to call his attorney and family. Neza then began shouting "I am not a terrorist" and asked an airline ticket agent for help while saying he was being illegally deported. He later began shouting "I am not a criminal!" when the deportation officer grabbed him by the arm, according to court documents.

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