Detainees 'fear for lives' in Somalia

Seattle Post Intelligencer ^ | November 16, 2002 | DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL

[sarcasm]

Mohamed Aweys says he was foolish to overstay his visa, but he does not want to die because of it.

Ahmed Noor Yousuf, who like Aweys is a Somalia refugee, has similar fears. He hopes the United States can find a way to send him back to northern Somalia and not war-torn Mogadishu in the south.

The two men are among five Somali men the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Seattle is detaining. They await deportation to a homeland that their attorneys say doesn't exist. With no government and no officials to accept the men, attorneys argue, the five men should not be deported to Somalia.

"We are terrified to go back to Somalia -- we fear for our lives," said Aweys from behind a thick-plastic window at the INS detention facility, just east of Seahawks Stadium. Aweys and Yousuf, speaking for the first time with reporters, tried to talk through metal slits in the window.

Both men said they have made mistakes that jeopardized their immigration status, but insist that they are neither criminals nor violent.

Their status, along with three other Somali men who INS officials say have committed crimes, may be settled next Friday when a U.S. District Court judge in Seattle hears arguments from their attorneys that to deport them to an ungoverned country would violate U.S. law.

The other three men, who have committed crimes while in the United States, are Yusuf Ali Ali, Mohamed Hussein Hundiye and Gama Kalif Mohamad.

Garrison Courtney, spokesman for the INS, said federal law requires deporting detainees to their homelands. "We can't change the laws; we have to follow them," Courtney said. "We've seen the criticisms levied at us, but everyone that has been taken in has received due process.

"We don't feel refugees or Somalis should be afraid of the INS, but if you commit a crime, you can be deported by law," Courtney said. "We have not tricked anyone. We had to execute warrants for the arrests of detainees."

Having applied for asylum, as Aweys and Yousuf did, or being a refugee "doesn't render you immune from the law or from deportation."

Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman agreed to temporarily delay deporting the men. Yousuf and Aweys hope the judge decided to permanently stop the deportation.

"I've made silly mistakes. I overstayed my visa," Aweys said.

"I was young and ignorant; I made some bad choices -- I had no idea of INS rules," said Aweys, who arrived in the United States in 1995 for a vacation and intended to join his mother and siblings in Finland but never did.

Aweys said his family fled Somalia because his parents, both of whom worked for the former Somali government, feared for their safety. His father was a chief engineer for the Somali air force, and his mother was a fingerprint technician.

"My intention was not to stay in the U.S., but I ended up staying," he said.

He held jobs with a work permit. He also attended Seattle Central Community College to learn English, psychology and political science with hopes of becoming a psychologist.

Aweys is being detained for the third time because of outstanding warrants for deportation -- chiefly for overstaying his visa.

Yousuf said he worked for the former Somali government's telecommunications ministry before civil war broke out in 1991. He fled to Nairobi, Kenya. Yousuf said he would like to go back to less chaotic northern Somalia to be reunited with his children, who have been cared for by his sister.

"I never hurt anybody. I never did anything wrong," said Yousuf, who had a work permit to install cable for AT&T in Seattle.

"I'm not a criminal -- never even a parking ticket . . . but if I go to Mogadishu, I'd be killed."

Neither Yousuf nor his attorney could explain why he faces deportation.

But he and Aweys believe they could be forced out of the United States because their applied for asylum in an attempt to stay here.

Both were denied asylum for reasons attorneys are still trying to fathom.

"Filing for asylum triggered this . . . we don't sentence people to death for civil violations," said Karol Brown, an attorney with Perkins Coie, a Seattle law firm that has taken the five men's cases for free.