Detroit judge orders ICE to return Iraqi immigrant mistakenly deported
Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press Published 3:42 p.m. ET Jan. 16, 2019 | Updated 5:58 p.m. ET Jan. 16, 2019
A Detroit judge has ordered that federal immigration officials return to the U.S. an Iraqi-American man the American Civil Liberties Union says was mistakenly deported to Iraq.
U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith ruled that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) must purchase an airline ticket for Muneer Subaihani, 52, to return from Iraq to the U.S. by Jan. 24. Judge Goldsmith also ordered that ICE must communicate details about his flight to his attorneys and to the U.S. Embassy.
Subaihani was deported in August to Iraq, where he hasn't lived since the early 1990s; the ACLU says he is stuck there without proper identification documents.
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Protesters protest the arrest of more than 100 Iraqi nationals by ICE outside of the Theodore Levin United States Courthouse on June 21, 2017 in Detroit. (Photo: Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)
Subaihani, who lived in Tennessee, is one of more than 1,400 Iraqi immigrants who have been targeted for deportation by ICE over the past two years. The ACLU and others filed a lawsuit on their behalf in 2017 seeking to block their removal, saying they would face persecution in Iraq.
The ACLU praised Judge Goldsmith's decision released late Tuesday.
ICE showed a "callous disregard" when they deported Subaihani, said Miriam Aukerman, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Michigan. "They showed an incredibly cavalier attitude toward respecting the rule of law and what the judge says."
A court order had blocked the deportations, but Subaihani, who has a heart condition, was removed. Aukerman said that ICE has admitted they messed up.
Aukerman said: "We asked the government, 'what's the deal?' They were basically like, 'oops, we deported him in violation of the court order.' "
A spokesman for the Detroit office ICE could not be immediately reached for comment.
ICE has previously defended the attempts to deport the Iraqis, saying they are convicted criminals who had previous orders of deportation. The range of crimes of the Iraqis varies, from marijuana possession to murder. Subaihani, a refugee who arrived in the U.S. in 1994, had been convicted of possessing marijuana, which made him eligible for deportation.
He was arrested in 2002 and 2004 for possessing marijuana. He was ordered deported, but Iraq was not taking him and others like him back.
In June 2017, he was arrested as part of a sweep by ICE agents across the U.S. Hundreds were arrested in Michigan and other states as part of the roundups that unnerved Iraqi-American communities.
He was released on bond in 2018, but then was taken again into custody by ICE in February 2018. In May, he was then taken to Georgia to meet with Iraqi consular officials. The ACLU has alleged that Iraqis like him were coerced into signing documents that allowed them to be deported.
Aukerman of the ACLU said he didn't want to be deported to Iraq, but was pressured into signing the documents because he was in detention for so long. Subaihani has some heart problems, said Aukerman.
Subaihani was flown by ICE to Morocco, where he was detained, then Bahrain, and finally Iraq, where he was detained again because ICE didn't give him documents that would identify him, said the ACLU.
Aukerman said that ICE didn't notify the ACLU after he was deported. The ACLU had to use an investigator to track down what happened to him.
"We said, 'where is he?' " Aukerman said of the ACLU's interactions with ICE officials. "They said, 'We have no idea.' They did not even know where he was in Iraq. They didn't know anything."
He was finally located by the ACLU in October.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/201...nt/2593197002/
