Thread: US grants stay of deportation order for Calif. honors studen

US grants stay of deportation order for Calif. honors student and her mother

June 21, 2011

By STEPHEN MAGAGNINI / McClatchy Newspapers

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Mandeep Chahal - a premedical University of California-Davis honors student on the verge of deportation to India with her mother - got an 11th hour stay from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday.

Chahal and her mother, Jagdish Kaur of Mountain View, Calif., both undocumented immigrants, had bought tickets for a 1 a.m. flight Wednesday back to their native Punjab when they were granted a temporary stay to appeal their deportation order, said their attorney, Kalpana Peddibhotla.

The unusual stay came after Chahal, an activist who raised money to help the world's poor, sparked a national Facebook campaign that began last week and attracted more than 4,000 supporters.

They appealed to California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and asked the Obama administration to use its legal discretion to stop the deportation of Mandeep, a "Dream Act" kid who came to the United States at age 6 with her mom and was voted "Most Likely to Save The World" at Los Altos High School.

Chahal, 20, and her mother had turned themselves in to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in San Francisco, when they were released Tuesday morning and granted an indefinite stay.

The stay "is fairly unusual and it happened because political action and publicity worked to stay the deportation," said Kevin Johnson, dean of the University of California-Davis School of Law.

"Why does the U.S. government want to deport somebody like this, who appears to be a college student in good standing, who can make a contribution to the United States? We're talking about tens thousands of kids nationally in this situation who aren't criminal aliens but upstanding residents."

A proposed federal law known as the Dream Act would include a path to legalization for kids brought here illegally by their parents who attend and graduate college, Johnson said. Several versions of the act have died in Congress even though Obama supported it, Johnson said.

The stay came just days after ICE Director John Morton issued a memo June 17 on the use of discretion in deportation cases.

Key factors for consideration, Morton said, include the individual's length of time in the United States, "particularly if the alien came to the United States as a young child and have graduated from a U.S. high school or ... successfully pursued or are pursuing a college or advanced degrees at a legitimate institution of higher education in the United States."

Chahal spent two years at UC Davis where she's studying to be a doctor "so she can remediate suffering in the third world," said her high school history teacher, Robert Freeman. "She's the kind of kid you wish you had 50 more of. I called her 'The Professor.' "

She served as president of her high school Amnesty International chapter and has helped Freeman's nonprofit, One Dollar For Life, raise money from students across the country to build a dozen Third World schools, he said.

Chahal and her mom fled Punjab in 1997, where Kaur had been persecuted for being politically active, Freeman said.

They entered the United States illegally to join Chahal's dad, a legal U.S. resident, and Kaur applied for asylum.

"Mandeep was listed on her mother's asylum claim and had no idea she wasn't in legal status," said Jeanne Butterfield, director of the Immigration Lawyers Association.

The case dragged on for six years because of the huge backlog in immigration courts, Butterfield said.

Because Kaur and her daughter missed a court date, they were ordered deported by an immigration judge in October 2003.

Last year, ICE agents picked up Kaur while she was shopping in Mountain View, and she spent close to a month in jail, Freeman said.

Tuesday, at the request of her lawyers, "ICE granted Ms. Chahal a stay of deportation to afford her attorneys more time to pursue their legal options in this case," said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice.

Peddibhotla said she's working directly with DHS to resolve the case. "I brought a motion to reopen (the asylum case) based on ineffective assistance by her prior attorney."

The case has been appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and could take at least six months to resolve, Peddibhotla said.

At a news conference organized by America's Voice Education Fund in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, Chahal's supporters said her case highlights the urgent need for immigration reform to allow Chahal and promising young people like her who had no control over how they got into this country to become productive citizens.

They urged ICE director Morton to exercise his discretion because "Mandeep meets all of these criteria, and more," said America's Voice spokesman Michael Earls. "She and her mother will be one of the first cases to test the implementation of the Morton memo."

But opponents of the Dream Act say the Morton memo is just the administration's way to grant amnesty through the back door.

www.bellinghamherald.com

Chahal's supporters said her case highlights the urgent need for immigration reform to allow Chahal and promising young people like her who had no control over how they got into this country to become productive citizens.