Court rules for former child immigrant



Wednesday, March 04, 2009

ATLANTA — A man who entered the country as a 12-year-old immigrant from Iran has won the right to a deportation hearing that an appeals court ruled was unconstitutionally denied to him.

Pedram Mokarram did not waive his due process rights when he was granted a 90-day tourist visa upon arrival in Charlotte, N.C., on Dec. 7, 1988, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found.

Monday's ruling means Mokarram is eligible for a hearing to contest his 2007 deportation, his lawyer said.

The attorney, Marshall L. Cohen of Atlanta, said Tuesday that he will ask for a court order to have Mokarram returned from the United Kingdom to the U.S. at government expense. Cohen hopes to reunite him permanently with his mother and sister in Charlotte.

Mokarram legally could not waive his rights in 1988, and he was accompanied only by a friend of a relative upon his arrival in the U.S. carrying a British passport, Cohen said.

"Even if that person signed a waiver, it wouldn't be valid because it had to be a parent or guardian," the attorney said.

He said Mokarram's Iranian-American mother, living in Charlotte, got him out of Iran and into the United Kingdom where he stayed with a relative until he came to the U.S.

Citizens of certain countries, including the U.K., are entitled to 90-day tourist visas provided they waive a deportation hearing should they overstay their visit. There was no evidence the boy ever signed a waiver, the court found.

Mokarram was working in Charlotte when he was stopped for traffic violations on June 30, 2007.

When his alien status came into question, the Department of Homeland Security placed a detainer against him. He was removed from the country without a hearing on Aug. 16, 2007, and returned to the United Kingdom.

The 11th Circuit panel concluded that once Mokarram was admitted to the United States and became subject to its jurisdiction, he was entitled to due process under the Fifth Amendment. It said in the absence of a waiver, he should not have been deported without a hearing involving his right to remain in the U.S.

The ruling does not resolve all of Mokarram's claims.

That, the court said, must be left to immigration officials in the Department of Homeland Security.

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March 04, 2009 - 4:29 p.m. EDT


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