Thread: Immigration Agency’s Tactic Spurs Alarm

Immigration Agency’s Tactic Spurs Alarm
By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: September 17, 2010

In his short life, Ousmane Coulibaly, a 19-year-old high school senior in Manhattan, has seen plenty of adversity. He grew up poor in Mali, was estranged from his family at 13 and has lived on the street there and in New York. An illegal immigrant, he is staying in a homeless shelter while he tries to graduate and obtain a special immigration status reserved for young people who have been abandoned or abused.

But now he is facing a different kind of challenge: an investigation by immigration authorities who have subpoenaed his school records, without explaining why.

The subpoena, which New York City school officials say is highly unusual here, has raised alarm among some immigration lawyers and civil libertarians who say they fear that the federal government is opening a new front in immigration enforcement, in a city where officials have staunchly defended immigrant rights.

Mr. Coulibaly’s lawyers, who have sued to quash the request, contend that the City Department of Education was prepared to release the files without resistance, even though the subpoena did not have the backing of a court order and could have been challenged.

Education officials say that their policy is to comply with all legally issued subpoenas and that they gave the student a chance to contest the one from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A spokesman for the immigration agency said that it regularly asked schools around the country for student records, and that most were “completely cooperative.â€

He's 19, no longer a minor, so why are they applying for special status for young people who are abandoned by parents? Sounds like he abandoned his parents to come here.

But then again, why is he being targeted, among the thousands of illegal alien students in NY. Could it be he's the wrong "race"?

The department must obey subpoenas, she wrote, pointing out that federal law permits schools to release student records without consent from the student or the student’s parents to comply with a judicial order or a lawfully issued subpoena.

So a LEGAL citizen CHILD of the state and Nation is easy pickens while..

[quote]But under federal law, she added, the department must inform the student — or the parents or legal guardians of a minor — “before we comply with a subpoena, precisely so they can decide whether to challenge the legality.â€