Thread: Son sends letter to Laura Bush to keep dad from deportation

Son sends letter to Laura Bush to keep dad from deportation

BY MELISSA GRACE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Saturday, July 5th 2008, 10:30 PM


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Chibueze Okorie (above l.) faces deportation for a past conviction, so son Chigozie (above and below) writes letters pleading for pardon.


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The brave 9-year-old son of a Brooklyn minister is praying First Lady Laura Bush will help "save my dad."

After failing to get a response to three letters he sent to President Bush begging that his reformed father be pardoned for a nearly two-decade-old drug bust, Chigozie Okorie decided to plead his case to the person closest to the leader - his wife.

"Please help me and my dad," the East New York fifth-grader wrote to the First Lady. "My dad made a mistake in 1989 when he was young."

The boy's father, Chibueze Okorie, is in jeopardy of being deported to Nigeria.

Because of a stringent federal law passed in 1996, immigrants convicted of crimes, even minor ones committed years ago, are rarely allowed to remain in this country. Okorie's best hope may be a presidential pardon.

The nonprofit group Human Rights Watch says nearly 680,000 immigrants, many of them parents, were deported under the law between 1997 and 2005.

Since 1992, after he served an 18-month prison term, Okorie, 46, has stayed far from trouble - becoming a poster boy for rehabilitation. As minister of evangelism at the Church of Gethsemane in Park Slope, he has devoted his life to counseling prisoners and ex-cons.

"My dad has changed and is working for our church," the boy wrote Mrs. Bush. "Please help me and my dad and speak to President Bush."

Okorie's pardon request, first submitted in 2000, has received support from church and political leaders in New York, including Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In a letter sent to the President in 2006, Chigozie, who was then in third grade, wrote, "President Bush, my Christmas gift from you is to pardon my dad. Please give me that gift because I love my dad and I am his only child."

In a letter sent in 2004, when Chigozie was 6 years old, he requested a meeting with the President to make his case in person.

Chigozie has received only form letters as replies, ones that include holiday wishes from the President.

A Justice Department official would say only that the pardon petition is "still pending" and no timeline could be given on a decision.

Justice Department statistics show the odds of getting a pardon or commutation of sentence are extremely long. Since he entered office, Bush has granted 157 pardons from 1,882 petitions, and has commuted six sentences of 7,146 commutation petitions.

Last month, the boy got a response to the letter he sent to Laura Bush from a Justice Department lawyer. Aside from assuring Chigozie a photo he'd sent of him with his dad is put in Chibueze Okorie's clemency file, no promises were made.

"Miracles happen and they happen through us," the lay minister said of a pardon.

Chibueze Okorie is due back in federal immigration court Tuesday. His lawyers are trying to prove that, under Nigerian law, he will face mandatory imprisonment if he's sent back home and will most likely be tortured.

In an interview last week at Gethsemane Church, the boy, who loves making comic books, talked about the heartbreaking possibility of losing a dad who takes him to school, to Great Adventure in the summer and church on Sundays.

"Forgive my dad," Chigozie begged. "I'd like him to stay in Brooklyn - he's my dad." If the older Okorie is forced out, "I might not ever see him again."

mgrace@nydailynews.com

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WILL THEY ALSO PARDON THE ALL THE US CITIZEN FATHERS WHO HAVE CHILDREN....WHO ARE IN JAIL FOR DRUG CHARGES?

The law is the law.

Dixie

Originally Posted by redpony353

WILL THEY ALSO PARDON THE ALL THE US CITIZEN FATHERS WHO HAVE CHILDREN....WHO ARE IN JAIL FOR DRUG CHARGES?

Bingo!