Fear among legal immigrants in the US

Nasir Uddin received a call from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to report to the authorities on 11 October, 2018 regarding his deportation case which had remained pending since 2005. His attorney was along with him and the case officer said it was a routine call. But when Nasir Uddin showed up he was immediately taken into custody and they soon started preparing the papers for his deportation. The ICE finally deported him on 16 October, 2018 before the attorneys could do anything to stop the deportation.

Nasir Uddin from Bangladesh has been residing in the USA since 2002. He got married to a US citizen in 2007 and has a one-year-old child. He was ready to be deported but his Provisional Waiver Application had remained pending which if approved would have allowed him to return to US within a short time. Now he has a minimum 5 years' bar.

A large number of cases similar to that of Nasir Uddin have been seen in the South Asian, Caribbean and Latin American communities in the recent months.

A record 9000 people had been deported in last summer. News reports said that compared to the corresponding period in 2017 there was a 160 per cent increase in the number of cases.

"We have seen a tremendous increase in deportations since President Donald Trump has taken his policy", said Ali Najmi, the attorney who vehemently tried to stop Nasir Uddin's deportation till the last minute.

"I think the South Asian community in New York, particularly the Bangladesh community here, has seen several deportations every month," said Najmi who is a co-founder of Muslim Democratic Club of New York.

President Donald Truimp administration is pursuing zero tolerance immigration policy which was an election pledge that brought the present government in power.

According to the attorneys, the problem had been created by the pending cases. Former US President Barack Obama’s policy to defer the hearing of immigration cases for long eight years and asking the applicants just to report to the ICE once a year for renewal has created all these problems.

“Actually Truimp administration is taking the benefit of the previous court decisions pending appeals,” said the attorney.

At present the ICE is not providing any scope of hearing the appeals and acting of the past orders of the court pending all other applications.

In the new phenomenon flights are being chartered to deport those whose immigration applications have once been rejected by the court.

“People in such categories are now being called to check-in and consequently deported,” said Najmi.

The present situation has frightened some of the legal immigrants who are now afraid even to travel to their own countries fearing that they might not be allowed to enter the US upon their return.