www.boston.com

Deportation surge leaves void in Brooklyn's Little Pakistan
By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff | August 14, 2005

NEW YORK -- Business in his modest grocery store in Brooklyn's Little Pakistan has gone down so much that Shafiq Ul Hassan has started stocking what he calls ''American foods" in a desperate attempt to attract different customers. Across from the baby goat meat and the pungent ingredients for curry powder, the immigrant shopkeeper has placed candy bars and loaves of white bread.

''You see how empty the store is. This would normally be packed with Pakistani people," Hassan said, sighing. ''A lot of people have left. Most have gone back home or another state. You just don't see people anymore."

Many of Hassan's Pakistani customers, and possibly 20 percent or more of the neighborhood's residents, have disappeared as a result of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants that the federal government has waged since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Waves of new enforcement programs with names like Operation Community Shield, Operation Predator, and Operation Tarmac produced a record 161,676 deportations nationwide last year, a surge of 60 percent since 2000, and a similarly large increase also has occurred in New York City.

Immigration specialists and residents of Little Pakistan, part of the Midwood section of Brooklyn, say the devastating impact the operations have had on this tiny swath of Brooklyn to some extent mirrors the effect on other Muslim or Arab communities across the nation.

Although Pakistan is an ally of the United States, the Muslim country is also considered a hotbed of Islamic extremism, which has led FBI and immigration agents to knock on many doors in Brooklyn, looking for people it believes pose a potential threat to national security. Brooklyn has the largest concentration of Pakistanis in the country.

The new enforcement programs are part of the federal government's crackdown on an estimated 445,000 illegal immigrants in the country who have evaded deportation orders, as well as undocumented workers employed in areas of national security such as airports and nuclear power plants, officials said. While the number of Muslim and Arab deportations is still relatively small compared with those involving Latin American immigrants, they have been growing rapidly.

Marc Raimondi, spokesman for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said the initiatives also have helped the government capture a range of lawbreakers, including violent gang members, drug smugglers, and sexual predators, as well as undocumented immigrants.

''In order for a nation to have national security, one of the things it must have is an immigration system with integrity. We must prioritize our efforts to get those who we feel pose the greatest threat to national security and public safety. We have done that through a number of initiatives and programs," Raimondi said.

Federal officials, for example, point to Operation Predator, which they say has helped the government sweep up 7,000 illegal residents accused or charged with sexual crimes nationally. Of those arrested, 2,100 have been sent back to their home countries. Six thousand people have been arrested so far under Operation Community Shield, many of them gang members who smuggle people or drugs into the country, according to federal officials.

''If you smuggle a person looking for a job for profit, you could easily smuggle a terrorist," Raimondi said.

Besides Mexican and other Latin Americans, Pakistanis represented the group most affected by the crackdown, both nationally and in New York City. About 500,000 people with Pakistani ancestry are in the country, with more than 120,000 of them in New York City, according to city officials and Pakistani diplomats.

''There is pressure on Pakistani communities because of people's apprehensions that they might be questioned by the law enforcement agencies and they might go through extensive scrutiny. So yes, it has affected communities, especially Brooklyn," said Mansoor Suhail, a spokesman for Pakistan's mission to the United Nations.

Community leaders in Little Pakistan estimate that since the terror attacks, 4,000 residents have been arrested, detained, or deported, and 15,000 Pakistanis have left New York City during that time, according to Pakistan's government.

Once a bustling neighborhood where Pakistani restaurants were packed with customers and the mosque overflowed with worshipers on Fridays, Little Pakistan has lost some of the energy it had when there were at least 40,000 residents and as many as 100,000, based on the estimates of the Pakistani government and community leaders.

''It's quieter. People stay in. . . . Everyone is scared," said Shahid Ali Khan, who was arrested in May and held in a detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., for five days until he received a temporary reprieve. Now, he worries about his wife and 10-year-old son, both of whom recently received deportation orders.

Along Coney Island Avenue in the Midwood section, men in white skullcaps still gather for a chat on the sidewalks and women in headdresses handle grain in grocery stores. The smell of beef kababs and smoked tikka waft along the avenue, but fewer people go inside restaurants for lunch. Men head to Friday afternoon prayers as they have done for decades, but the mosque receives only a third of the worshipers it once did, a neighborhood activist said.

Russian and Latino immigrants are beginning to move into the apartments and stores left behind by Pakistanis. Overall, business in Little Pakistan is down 50 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Council of Peoples Organization, a resettlement house on Coney Island Avenue.

Many Pakistani residents, who settled in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1980s, worked as bankers and doctors in their homeland but found themselves working as laborers and shopkeepers in the United States. Some came on work visas, but many others arrived illegally, residents say. Still, the community thrived until 2001. The government began the controversial program in 2003 that mandated males 16 and older from 24 predominantly Muslim countries to contact the nearest immigration office. ''It was so bad," said Khan.

Because of that and other enforcement actions, some fearful residents decided to leave New York rather than face questions by agents. Mohammad Razvi, founder of the Council of Peoples Organization, recalled a barber leaving his shop without notifying anyone. A video clip of the abandoned shop shows the lights on and brushes and combs left on the tables as if the owner was returning the next day. Later, ''He called and said, 'I am in Canada, and I am not coming back,' " Razvi said.

Thousands have been left in legal limbo or picked up. Khan, 48, who was nearly deported in May, came to this country eight years ago so that his son Mansoor could have heart surgery. The day federal agents arrived with a deportation order, Khan, a former banker in Pakistan, was working as a laborer, but his wife was home dressing their son, who is in a wheelchair and suffers spasms. Khan said one agent was so touched by the mother and disabled son that he later told him, ''You are not the type of people we are looking for, but we have to do what we have to do."

Khan, a polite man who still wears the starched attire of a banker, said things are a little better for now, but he is unsure about his family's future.

The crackdown continues to affect the neighborhood. On Tuesday, Razvi was trying to help a cabdriver who had been called by a federal immigration agent. The next day, Razvi sat in his chair looking drawn and sad. The cabdriver, whose work visa had allegedly expired, had been picked up by authorities but not deported.

Razvi sees hope for Little Pakistan, though. While business is not improving, at least it is not getting worse. He also said federal agents are no longer searching for anyone who might lack proper immigration papers, and instead are targeting certain individuals who have overstayed their visas.

Established residents like Hassan, who has owned his grocery store for nearly two decades, are trying to change with the times. Another store owner converted his jewelry shop into a 99-cent store once he realized most of his customers would not return. He thought it would be easier to run a convenience store because of a drop-off in business at the jewelry store, which was heavily patronized by Pakistanis.

New Pakistani arrivals, Razvi said, have their immigration papers in order. ''They have their T's crossed and their I's dotted," he said, rubbing his weary eyes and smiling.