Thread: Grievance About a Policeman, Then a Deportation Hearing

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/nyreg ... grant.html

September 26, 2005
Grievance About a Policeman, Then a Deportation Hearing
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Waheed Saleh says he was smoking a cigarette outside a doughnut shop at the rough edge of Riverdale in the Bronx when a police officer handed him a summons for disorderly conduct. He protested, he says, and the officer yelled at him to go back to his own country.

Mr. Saleh, a Palestinian, worked as a gypsy-cab driver illegally seeking fares and was used to tickets for infractions like double parking, making U-turns and picking up passengers. But he believed that this officer, Kishon Hickman, was harassing him. So he complained to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which examines complaints against police officers.

Before he heard back from the board, however, he heard from federal immigration authorities. About a year later, outside the same doughnut shop on the night of Dec. 20, 2004, he was confronted by a federal immigration agent and local police officers. The police took him into custody on administrative immigration violations, sending him into deportation proceedings. Mr. Saleh believes it was retaliation for his civilian review board complaint.

Now, this tiny interaction between cabbie and police officer has turned into something with potentially far larger ramifications: it appears to be the first test case of Executive Order 41, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's two-year-old effort to reassure the city's immigrants that they can seek help from city agencies without fear of reprisal based on illegal immigration status. The order essentially codified a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for city workers.

Whatever the outcome - the police deny retaliation, and the review board rejected Mr. Saleh's claim of harassment - the case reveals that two years after Executive Order 41 was issued, there is no real mechanism in place to independently enforce it, to punish violators or even to investigate complaints like Mr. Saleh's, which was detailed by his lawyers at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund in a letter received by the Mayor's Office on Immigrant Affairs last week.

Guillermo Linares, the mayor's commissioner of immigrant affairs, though technically responsible for protecting immigrants' access to city agencies, has no authority to investigate or enforce Executive Order 41, said Erica Gonzalez, a spokeswoman. The complaint has been referred back to the very agency that it accuses, the Police Department.

"It does appear to be a very important test of the strength of E.O. 41 and the mayor's commitment to vigorously applying the order," said Michael Wishnie, a professor at New York University School of Law who has brought several lawsuits challenging the federal government's policies on immigration violations. "If the Bloomberg administration lets this stand, it sends the message: Complain of corrupt or abusive police at your peril."

Robert Lawson, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, said there had been complete compliance with the order. "The mayor showed his commitment to ensuring the immigrant community access to city services without fear by signing E.O. 41 two years ago," he said. "Since that time, city agencies have taken care to comply with the order, and there is not a single documented case of it being violated."

There are exceptions written into Executive Order 41: Illegal immigrants suspected of criminal activity or terrorism are not protected. Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said that Mr. Saleh's host of summonses amounted to illegal activity, just as a single parking ticket would.

In an interview at a diner near the same doughnut shop, Mr. Saleh said he left his hometown of Jenin, on the West Bank, after his wife died of brain cancer, to find a better way to support his two young children, who stayed behind with his parents.

He arrived in November 2000 on a visitor's visa, got a valid driver's license and stayed on illegally to work at gas stations in Rockland County and as a landscaper in Yonkers. But after 9/11, he said, it became much harder to get work without a Social Security card, and he joined other Arabic men driving gypsy cabs.

"I'm running from the Middle East, from that trouble," he said. "Then after 9/11, the rules, everything changed here."

Mr. Saleh had repeated encounters with the police, and had begun to believe he was being harassed by Officer Hickman even before the smoking incident, which happened late in 2003. Deputy Commissioner Browne said the encounters followed an order by the precinct commander to increase enforcement in response to general community complaints about unlicensed cabs.

Mr. Saleh described most of the police he encountered as "nice, honest" officers who gave him tickets politely if they caught him breaking the rules. Officer Hickman was different, he said. And while on duty, he was often accompanied by a Lieutenant Nicholson, he said.

At least twice, Mr. Saleh said, he went to the 50th Police Precinct headquarters to complain. The police told him to save his story for traffic court, he said. He had already done that a couple of times, fighting tickets. But when he tried to bring up what he considered Officer Hickman's harassing language, the judge in traffic court referred him to the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

On Dec. 13, 2003, soon after the cigarette incident, he said, Officer Hickman singled him out among 10 double-parked drivers for a summons, telling the others to move on. When Mr. Saleh protested, he says, the officer yelled and threatened to arrest him. That incident became the only one of his complaints the Civilian Complaint Review Board investigated, according to Andrew Case, a spokesman for the board.

According to Tushar J. Sheth, Mr. Saleh's lawyer, it was still under investigation in the fall of 2004 - a typical amount of time for such a investigation - when Officer Hickman asked a friend of Mr. Saleh's to relay a message to him: If he did not withdraw the complaint, the officer would "give him a hard time."

About two weeks later, the federal immigration agent showed up, with a lieutenant, Kevin Nicholson.

"While police may share immigration information about individuals suspected of illegal activity," Deputy Commissioner Browne said in an e-mail message, "the allegation that Lieutenant Nicholson disclosed Saleh's immigration status to retaliate against him for having filed a C.C.R.B. complaint is untrue."

As for federal immigration officials, they said it makes no difference when, how or why they learned about Mr. Saleh.

"ICE never discloses the source of its investigative leads," Dean Boyd, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said. "The method by which a violator comes to ICE's attention has no bearing on the disposition of the case."

For Mr. Saleh, out on bond but facing a deportation hearing in December, that is bad news.

"Some people, they warn me, if you start complaining about the police, for sure they will give you a hard time about your illegal status," he said. "But I believe inside, in New York City, there is justice."

In an interview at a diner near the same doughnut shop, Mr. Saleh said he left his hometown of Jenin, on the West Bank, after his wife died of brain cancer, to find a better way to support his two young children, who stayed behind with his parents.

He arrived in November 2000 on a visitor's visa, got a valid driver's license and stayed on illegally to work at gas stations in Rockland County and as a landscaper in Yonkers. But after 9/11, he said, it became much harder to get work without a Social Security card, and he joined other Arabic men driving gypsy cabs.

"I'm running from the Middle East, from that trouble," he said. "Then after 9/11, the rules, everything changed here."

Which is it, supporting the kids or running away from the Middle East? He's been here since 2000. Sounds like he's abandoned his kids to make a few extra bucks in the US. Deport him and make him take responsibility for his kids.