Posted on 04/12/2017 5:24:35 AM PDT by wbill
PORTLAND, Maine — Abdi Ali doesn’t have memories of the country to which the United States government intends to deport him.
Ali and his family fled war in Somalia in 1996, when he was 7 years old. They came to the U.S. legally as refugees, and Ali became a permanent resident a year later, according to interviews and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.
In his first interview since ICE agents arrested the 28-year-old inside a Portland courthouse last week, Ali said he is terrified of being sent back to Somalia and does not understand why, after decades in the U.S., he is being deported on a 4-year-old drug possession conviction for which he has already served jail time.
“I’ve been here my whole life, and they [are] kicking me out for this one charge,” Ali said, wiping tears on his orange jumpsuit at the Cumberland County Jail on Monday. “If I go back to my country, they’re going to pretty much kill me. I don’t know [anything] about my country. I’m American. I consider myself American.”
Ali’s arrest appears to be the first time ICE has entered a Maine court to arrest someone. It has struck deep anxiety into the state’s immigrant community and comes as a sign that the Trump administration’s more aggressive immigration enforcement will target people here, including those with legal status in the U.S.
“The new thing that is really, really disturbing here is them seeking him out in the court,” Susan Roche, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, said. “This shines a light on the injustice in our immigration laws.”
Roche said immigration officials trying to deport people based on old convictions is not new, but seeking immigrants out in court to do so is. The new, more aggressive enforcement approach evident in Ali’s case is also affecting his fiancee and her three children, whom he lives with in Westbrook, she said.
“It’s at a different level now than it was before, but we’ve seen so many cases where a family is torn apart by something someone did in the past,” Roche said.
Last Thursday, three ICE agents arrested Ali while he was at the Cumberland County Courthouse to plead not guilty to a drunken driving charge. They walked him out of the court in handcuffs, and a spokesman for the agency later pointed to Ali’s history of misdemeanor convictions, including two for assault in 2010.
But the documents ICE agents gave Ali when he was arrested, explaining why the agency is seeking to deport him, cite only a 2013 cocaine conviction. Ali pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor and served five months in jail. At the time, Ali said, there was no talk of deporting him for the crime, and he doesn’t understand why the federal government is coming after him years later.
“Why me? I’m not even a felon,” Ali cried. “They’re treating me like I’m a big criminal or something”
When asked why ICE is seeking to deport the Ali for a 4-year-old misdemeanor, spokesman Khaalid Walls said that under Trump’s executive order on “ Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” the agency “will no longer exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”
“All of those in violation of immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention, and if found removable by final order, removal from the United States,” Walls said.
Ali is only one of many Somalis who will be sent back to Africa this year, according to Stephen Schwartz, the U.S. ambassador to Somalia.
“We’ve actually repatriated 168 Somalis this year, and we’re going to repatriate hundreds more,” Schwartz said during a visit to Portland last Monday. “I would like migration to be done through legal means.”
In recent weeks, the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab has waged an increasingly deadly bombing campaign across Somalia, and famine and drought put more than a quarter of the country’s population at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations.
To Ali and his fiancee Melissa Hair, it seems deeply unfair that after coming to the U.S. legally and serving time for his crimes, the government is seeking to deport him.
“It’s like he’s being punished twice,” Hair said.
The couple, who have been together for nine years, were open about Ali’s troubled past.
Like many other Somalis who immigrated to Maine, Ali grew up in Portland’s Riverton neighborhood. He attended Lincoln Middle School and graduated from Deering High School in 2008, where Hair said he was a talented basketball player.
But after fleeing war in Somalia, Ali’s family had a difficult home life and he ran away around the age of 17, he said. Ali isn’t sure where his mother and siblings are today.
“I was on my own for a little bit,” Ali said.
After running away, Ali fell into crime and drug use. Between 2009 and 2014, he was convicted on a slew of misdemeanors, many of them petty crimes. According to a criminal background check, he was twice charged with felonies — for robbery and drug trafficking — but the charges were dismissed when he pleaded guilty to lesser crimes.
Ali eventually found a new family in Hair and her three children. In the past few years, he has straightened out his life, they said. He’s been working at a seafood processing plant and bringing home an income to help support the family. Ali and her children are close, Hair said, and she hasn’t figured out how to tell them he might be forced to leave the country.
An employee at the temp agency that helped Ali get the job described him as punctual and hardworking. Ali said he was getting ready to file his taxes before being arrested last week.
“Why are they doing this right now to me when they didn’t do it back then?” he said.
ICE going into the court to arrest Ali has other immigrants on edge, according to Mahmoud Hassan, president of the Somali Community Center of Maine. Courthouse arrests have drawn heavy criticism in states where they are more common. On Monday 179 Maine lawyers and Maine’s attorney general signed letters opposing the practice.
“People go to the court to address wrongs and seek justice,” Hassan said. “For ICE authorities to be staking out the court erodes their trust and the sanctity of that building.”
Ali said he is working with the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project to find a lawyer to represent him during the removal proceedings in immigration court. He and Hair hope there will be a way to fight the government but are worried their family and hopes for the future may be broken apart.
Before Ali was arrested, the couple had been hatching a plan to open a business. It would be called “Fresh Gear,” and they would sell affordable boys clothing to poor teens around Maine. The idea was partially inspired by Ali’s childhood, Hair said.
“I don’t know about that now,” Ali said. “I don’t know where they’re sending me now.”
He turned his life around 360 degrees. Funny how you had to read several paragraphs before you get to the part about his criminal record. It's almost as if the writer included it as an afterthought. I guess it wouldn't have the emotional impact if he had started off the headline with: Somali man with multiple felony convictions being deported.
Yep. My wife is a lawful permanent resident (working on her citizenship) and I've made it clear to her to keep her nose clean, not that it was ever a concern. She understands that any trouble and she can get the boot.
I'm sure this Somali did as well when he chose to possess drugs.
For every single one, as well, getting arrested was the "Uh-Oh" moment for them, that scared them enough to stop being an idiot. They always settled down afterwards.
Strangely enough, all of them (that I can think of) met their wives/girlfriends shortly afterwards as well. That likely settled them down too. Me too.... I can't remember the last time I closed a bar down. Would much rather be home with Mrs WBill and WBill Jr. That's much. much more fun.
But the idiot in the article? Seems like the guy who never learns, and doesn't know when to shut up. I've seen them before too...they're usually getting loaded into the police cruiser and still are running their mouths. Or get popped in the nose in the bar on Friday, and show back up on Saturday to have it happen again.
Sez me, good riddance. I think he's about to learn the definition of "consequences".
Per #31- Looks to be a 7 year old girl, 5 year old boy, and an infant. All of them fall within his insertion window.
Note how the reverse argument is never EVER made to keep these types out: How it would be unfair to let into the country some lowlife making his way to the US or Europe because he doesn't speak the language/has spent all his life in Sh!tholistan/no family contacts in the US/Europe/etc.
Never EVER.
Boohoo. See my #45. I'm sick and tired of hearing the press and, much too often, the courts use the above as an excuse. Well done in this case!
Deport him? Heck, he should be a candidate for sainthood if you believe this article. All that’s missing is his cure for cancer.
Deport the POS and save the boo-hoo for someone deserving.
Girlfriend with 3 kids and he isn’t married to her?
Another example of what is wrong with the country and the culture.
She’s dead.
More than 20 paragraphs of sainthood before getting to the truth.
The best laugh line, “People go to the court to address wrongs and seek justice”. People go to court because they’ve been arrested.
Hahaha! He thinks the courtroom is a safe zone.
I would bet they left out a small detail that he has been under a deportation order since his drug conviction. Many illegals in this country have already had an immigration hearing (which many chose not to even attend) and have been under court orders to deport and yet allowed to remain here by the previous administration.
ICE is now gathering up people who already have deportation orders because they can be deported quickly, in as little as a few hours.
How is this man a “hard luck” case? He has been in and out of trouble and was back in court when ICE detained him. He has been here since the age of 7 and only recently “was getting his act together” though that doesn’t ring true when he was back in court for yet another serious issue.
The media wants to pull at heart strings with these stories and usually leave out the information that deportation orders are now being enforced. As they should be.
Some ICE agents and definitely most media drum up cases for propaganda purposes. Thing is, I’m immune to their propaganda.
Keep the money he obtained illegally and use to send him and his spawn back to where they originated. When I am in a cab line outside an airport, I always select a white cab driver.
It’s all good.
It’s actually quite simple.
If he’s been here for 20 years and thinks he’s an American he should have applied for citizenship.
Obviously his identification as an American wasn’t very strong. You have to keep the paperwork straight and go through the correct hoops to stay in any country..:^)
“You must run with a much better class of people than I do.”
Better than the class you used to run with...
When my husband became a permanent resident it was very clear that he could still be deported for drug or murder convictions. He is a citizen now.
“What are the chances...”
The media will never give the entire story if it doesn’t fit their own narrative. Their social engineering makes them as much of a criminal as the deported man.
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