Posted on 06/17/2002 8:46:52 AM PDT by gubamyster
by Marie Szaniszlo Sunday, June 16, 2002
They came for Eleanor Mohamed's husband last month around dawn, as he and their 11-month-old baby slept.
They came for Elias Sawan's family in much the same way, rousing the 77-year-old retired meteorologist and his wife from a sound sleep. Once inside, the men fanned out across their Walpole home, handcuffing their four grown children as the couple looked on and wept.
When they came for Raouf Mankaryous, he was on his way to work. The 32-year-old electrical engineer got as far as the driveway of his Ayer home when the car pulled in. His wife, crying and still in her pajamas, ran outside as they handcuffed him, and knelt at their feet, begging for his release. Upstairs, the couple's 2-year-old son and 5-month-old daughter slept.
Since early this year, when Immigration and Naturalization Service agents began raiding the homes of ``absconders'' - immigrants who have remained in the United States despite deportation orders - 35 people have been arrested in Massachusetts, and nearly 700 have been arrested nationwide.
Virtually all of them come from countries that U.S. officials have linked to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. But in most cases, immigration advocates say, their only crime is that they remained here in the hope of eventually being granted asylum.
They are all targets of a massive crackdown on illegal immigrants since Sept. 11. And, as the government comes under mounting pressure to shore up America's borders, there are many more, from other countries, who face a similar fate.
In the months ahead, INS officers will seek out another 115 in Massachusetts and an estimated 300,000 nationwide.
``There's a human story behind every one of these cases,'' says Denis Riordan, acting district director of the INS Boston office. ``But they were afforded due process. They filed appeals, and the appeals were denied. It's no longer a matter of discretion.''
Already, the INS has begun to enter their names in the FBI's National Crime Information Computer, which will allow any law enforcement officer to determine whether a person - someone stopped for speeding, for example - is an absconder.
In the meantime, advocates say, many of those who already have been detained are languishing in jail alongside convicted felons, awaiting deportation to countries they fled because of poverty or persecution.
``There's not an immigrant out there who doesn't think that everything that can be done to stop terrorism should be done,'' says Victor DoCouto, a native of the Azores who came to the United States when he was 6, became a citizen after joining the Air Force, fought in Vietnam and now heads the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.
``In many cases, they know only too well what terrorism and violence is like; it's the reason they fled their countries in the first place, and the reason they are more loyal to this place than some Americans are.''
The Sawans, Mankaryous and Saliba Kheirallah, a Norwood gas station owner and father of two, for example, are all Christians, a group that has suffered torture, rape and murder at the hands of Islamic extremists in their native Lebanon and Egypt, according to Amnesty International.
All of them entered the United States legally on visas, which have since expired. Since then, they have lived in a kind of limbo, unable, they say, to go back to their native countries because they have nothing left there, yet unable to go forward. They have applied to remain, spending thousands of dollars on immigration lawyers, but either been rejected because of quotas, or languished on waiting lists, praying for a miracle that never came.
What came was Sept. 11.
``If the INS wanted them back, they should have taken them a long time ago, not after 18 years,'' says the Sawans' cousin, Amina Sarkes, who came to the United States with her family in 1969 as a political refugee. ``They never committed a crime, never even got a speeding ticket, never were on welfare, always worked, always paid taxes. Wouldn't the United States want to keep people like that?''
That they may have lived otherwise upstanding lives, however, is besides the point, INS officials say, once they fail to comply with an order to leave. Far from seeing them as victims of circumstance, the INS considers them fugitives from justice.
``What (Sarkes) is saying is that, because her relatives have been able to get away this long, they should be home free,'' says Russell Bergeron, an INS spokesman. ``U.S. citizens with outstanding warrants are arrested in their homes every day. That's often the consequence of breaking the law.''
In the post-Sept. 11 world of politics, even many liberals unabashedly support enforcing outstanding deportation orders, even if they disagree with a judge's reason for issuing one.
``On an individual basis, many of these are sympathetic cases,'' says Rep. Barney Frank(D-Mass.). ``But if they've gone through the (appeals) process and still been denied, either you deport people or there's no point in having an immigration policy.''
At the Immigrants Assistance Center in New Bedford, Helena Marques sees the unintended consequences of immigration policy every day.
Marques runs a support group for women whose husbands have been deported and who have been forced to decide whether to go with them to a country that might be completely foreign to them and their American-born children, or to stay and try to hold on to whatever they might have left.
In some instances, the men were the sole breadwinners in their families, so when the women lost their husbands, they also lost their incomes, their health insurance and their homes.
``Their lives, and their children's lives, have turned completely upside down,'' Marques says.
Marques and other advocates see unsettling parallels between the arrest of immigrants whose sole offense has been failing to comply with a deportation order, and the interment of Japanese immigrants during World War II.
``It's not about justice; it's a policy based on a climate of fear,'' says Westy Egmont, who heads the International Institute of Boston, New England's largest immigration service agency. ``A tracking system that would require people who are here on visas to check in periodically would be fair and appropriate. But these (arrests) are broad-stroke judgments, with no humanitarian relief. We're reaching for straws so that we can feel like we're doing something as a nation.''
It has been nearly a month since Mohamed Mohamed, Eleanor's husband, was arrested at his Quincy home for failing to comply with a deportation order due to an expired visa. And although it is only a fraction of the time some other illegal immigrants have spent in Bristol County Jail, she has begun to wonder if it will ever end.
No one will tell her exactly when he will be deported. All she has been promised is 48 hours in which to pack his bags, but that she has already done.
Next week, their son Ahmed will turn 1. And if her husband has not been returned to Egypt by then, she will wait for his call from prison, and hold the phone up to Ahmed's ear.
Their crime is violating immigration laws.
In many cases, they know only too well what terrorism and violence is like; it's the reason they fled their countries in the first place, and the reason they are more loyal to this place than some Americans are.
If they are so loyal & have so much to lose, then why didn't they comply with the law?
If the INS wanted them back, they should have taken them a long time ago, not after 18 years,'' says the Sawans' cousin, Amina Sarkes
The government did want them & has been trying to get rid of them. They should be happy they got to live the American dream in the Land of Opportunity for 18 years.
They never committed a crime
They are illegal immigrants, by definition they committed a crime.
How does an illegal alien buy a house & a gas station? Isn't a SS # &/or other documentation required?
It is time for mass deportations. If not, Balkanization of the U.S. will occur and conflict will follow.
It's about bloody time.
WOW!!! Barney Frank in a rare moment of lucidity!!!!
It's about finally correcting a long pattern of naive and destructive negligence against our immigration laws. America-hating immigrants came here and lived in our society then turned around to kill 3,000 of us. Blame your fellow immigrants, the rest of us don't want to hear it.
Not to say that these people had anything to do with 9/11, but I would suspect each victim at the World Trade Center and Pentagon had a human story too. Unfortunately, we will never hear theirs.
Since this sounds good, and since it's coming from Barney Frank, I assume this is a preparatory move on his part. Expect a future announcement that there is no point in having an immigration policy. People who oppose open borders will be branded as racists who hate children.
Hey mister weighed in the balance, this is just my opinion, but I believe Balkanization of the US has already occurred, and low level conflict has already been taking place. You are right, however, but the continued Balkanization and conflict will more than likely grow much worse, as time goes on. I wish I could be more optimistic, but I can't.
In the months ahead, INS officers will seek out another 115 in Massachusetts and an estimated 300,000 nationwide.
Not a pi$$hole in the snow compared to the total number of illegals in Massachusetts.
Time to round up all the Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatamalans, Brazilians, Columbians, Irish, etc.
It doesn't matter if these are good people or not, what matters is that they have broken our laws by being here illegally.
And it would not be terribly long, perhaps 30-50 years before the vast majority of balkanized immigrants were assimilated.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no will to do this.
Bozos.
SHIP 'EM BACK!!! WAY BACK!!
DEPORT 'EM ALL, FAST AND HARD!!!
Just checked out the International Institute of Boston's website. It is a United Way agency. One more reason to pat myself on the back for refusing to support that leftist organization.
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