Taimur Hussain is one of 3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States who have been held in detention in the past decade. Their stories sound similar, from poor representation by lawyers, to feelings of being targeted by immigration authorities.
In the middle of his 15th day of detainment, a group of immigration security officers at the Elizabeth, New Jersey detention centre burst into the cell of Taimur Hussain, a 53-year-old Bangladeshi national. Hussain heard them yell, “Pack up, and get out of your room.” He was confused. He was shaking.
Before they led him out, he was asked to sign some documents. He didn’t know how to read in English, so he told the officers he didn’t understand. The less he understood, the louder they yelled. The officers produced an interpreter, but then Hussain requested a lawyer. They ignored him and packed him inside a pick up van. His hands, and feet were shackled to his waist by a belly chain.
He glanced at the flashing lights in front of the pick up van as he was led out of the vehicle. It was at that instant he realised he was at an airport he was to be deported back to his homeland.
Months later, speaking in Bangla, Hussain recalled: “At that moment I didn’t care about myself, but I thought what would happen to my family?” Hussain had spent nine months in detention, torn from his wife and three children, Two of whom who are US citizens.
Taimur Hussain is one of 3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States who have been held in detention in the past decade. Their stories sound similar, from poor representation by lawyers, to feelings of being targeted by immigration authorities.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, an asylum expert who teaches immigration law at Cornell University said that over the last two decades “more people are being detained then ever before.” The pace has quickened as a result of the Obama administration’s Secure Communities programme, which in 2008 required the Immigration Customs and Enforcement department (ICE) to meet a deportation quota of 400,000 illegal immigrants per year. The Secure Communities programme takes advantage of a high-tech information-sharing programme that checks for a person’s immigration status when they are fingerprinted before arrest. As a result, a record number 396,000 people were deported in 2011, the largest in ICE’s history.
After serious pushbacks from immigration advocates, the Obama administration adapted the federal guidelines in June 2011 to focus on deporting those with criminal records. But the numbers of those with no criminal record has not decreased. Many experts say the “guidelines” have been enforced haphazardly; leaving undocumented immigrants like Hussain entangled in a web of byzantine immigration rules they know little about.
But Hussain’s story doesn’t just embody the issues of detention and deportation. His case is representative of those immigrants who, right from their arrival in the US, may have had a plausible case for political asylum, but through a combination of poverty and bad legal advice find themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Mohammad Rashid, a community activist in Jackson Heights, who has worked on several asylum cases including Hussain’s, has seen many undocumented immigrants lacking the proper resources to understand the ways the laws work. “They follow the advice of lawyers blindly out of fear,” he said.
The attorneys take advantage of their unfamiliarity with the laws by demanding money, and providing false promises. This increases their vulnerability to fraud according to Ben Winograd, a staff attorney at the American Immigration Council. “The lawyers have their clients file frivolous applications, guaranteeing a green card. Instead they appear on the radar screen of immigration authorities and end up in deportation proceedings,” he said.
Before all the immigration turmoil began, Hussain had lived a different life, in another country, which also had its perils.
Taimur Hussain came to New York City in January 1995 on a visitor’s visa with his wife Sabiha, and their three year old daughter Rezwana. In Bangladesh, he managed a family import-export clothing business in the town of Kumar Para, located in Sylhet, a district in the northeastern tip of the country. He lived next to the birthplace of Hazrat Shah Jalal, the 14th Century saint, famously known for introducing Islam to the Bengal region.
It was his involvement in politics that got him into trouble. He dedicated himself to the Jaatiyo party, a political organisation established by former Bangladeshi president Mohammad Ershad where he worked as a recruiter for the organisation in the late 1980s. “The nation was in ruins,” he said. “The roads weren’t paved, and there was immense poverty. I just wanted to see my country become developed.”
But after a couple of years, Hussain began receiving death threats from opposition parties. By 1995 the political situation had worsened, as violent protests between political party activists, and security forces peaked. After a rigged election in parliament, the Bangladeshi-Nationalist-Party, Awami League, and Jaatiyo party held several protests demanding a caretaker government. “People were fighting and threatening each other everywhere,” Hussain said.
During one of the demonstrations, unknown assailants stabbed Hussain in the forehead and arm. He still has the scars. Hussain became tired of being a target. “I told the leaders of the Jaatiyo party that I’m not going to do this anymore. They were threatening to kill my family and me,” he said.
Before marrying in 1991, Taimur’s wife Sabiha had lived on the outskirts of Sylhet. Her family compound was in the center of lush tea gardens and green paddy fields. Her father ran a prominent business in Shudhor Tana, a 30-minute trek by rickshaw to the city.
“I was the youngest, raised with so much love, I didn’t get the opportunity to see sadness or sorrow. My father didn’t allow me to face pain,” Sabiha recalled. Once her father died, a friend of the family arranged for Sabiha to marry Taimur, and within ten days of meeting, they were husband and wife. “My family loved her, and just like 1...2...3... we were married,” Hussain said. Sabiha was 24-years-old, and Taimur, 36.
Four years into their marriage when they moved to the US, Sabiha recalled that they dreamt of a new life. “We hoped that one day things would change nicely,” Sabiha said.
For their first few months in the US in 1995, Hussain and his wife stayed with his friend, Farouk Ahmed, in Elmhurst, Queens. Ahmed arranged a job for Hussain at a North Indian restaurant, Pandit, on the Upper West Side. “I started as a dishwasher. I told the owner, I have a family please help me,” said Hussain. “He taught me many things, how to cook, work in the kitchen. He said ‘once you learn these things you can become someone big, you can become a chef.’” Hussain said he made most of his money from the tips all workers shared at Pandit. “Some days I made $100, and if I was lucky I made $200,” he said.
“Being undocumented, working odd jobs was all I could do to help my family survive,” he recalled.
At the end of June 1995, Hussain’s 6-month B-2 visitor’s visa was about to expire. To avoid overstaying, he applied for political asylum.
Political asylum is by definition a legal protection against deportation. It is based on the Refugee Act of 1980, and it required that Hussain prove that he had well-founded claims of persecution or fear of persecution in his home country. Given his history of affiliation with the Jaatiyo party, Hussain should have had a good chance of receiving asylum.
A family friend helped Hussain fill out the application. “We didn’t have the money to afford a good lawyer,” Sabiha said.
There are two ways to apply for asylum: affirmatively and defensively. Affirmative applications are filed by those who are here legally, or who have escaped the notice of the Department of Homeland Security.
Applicants who are already in deportation proceedings file defensive claims. These applicants must go through the immigration court and face an adversarial trial with a judge and government lawyer present.
Because Hussain still had time left on his tourist visa in 1995 he initially filed his application affirmatively; but the officer from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service that reviewed his case could not make a decision, so his case was sent to an immigration judge. One month after he filed, in July 1995, Hussain received notice from US Citizenship and Immigration Service ordering him to appear at 26 Federal Plaza to explain his case.
Hussain and his wife did not know how to read English. They sought advice from their neighbours, and in August got free help from Salim Sheikh, a prominent attorney in the Bangladeshi community. “I just listened to him. We were lucky to get his advice,” Hussain said.
It turned out that the day they met with Sheikh was the actual date of their interview with the judge. Sheikh called the immigration office. It was too late. Their file had been closed and denied for failure to show up to court for their hearing, resulting in a deportation order to Hussain, his wife, and eldest daughter Rezwana. “He told us to stay quiet, and to wait to see if any amnesty opportunities would become available,” Sabiha remembered. As a result, Hussain would face a host of complications from ICE.
What Sheikh didn’t tell Hussain was that he could still make a motion to reopen his case. According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website, motions to reopen could be filed within 30 days from the date of the decision.
When recently asked about the case, Sheikh, who said he’s handled mostly Bangladeshi detention and deportation cases as a lawyer for the past 13 years, said he doesn’t recall officially representing the Hussain family. He blamed his clients for being negligent. “These people don’t go to the lawyers at the right time or bring the necessary documents,” he said. “It’s not just the lawyer’s obligation to follow up with the client. The clients need to be equally responsible defending their cases too.” He did not indicate how an immigrant without English-language skills or knowledge of immigration law might know how to defend their case.
The way the Hussains remember it, they had been advised to stay under the radar, and so they did. “We just went about our lives and focused on raising our kids,” Sabiha remembered. The couple had two more daughters: Sabreena born on September 22nd, 1998, and Sanjana born on March 25th, 2003 (both children are American citizens and therefore under current immigration law could end up staying here alone if their parents got deported.)
Hussain, who had continued working at the Pandit restaurant, but no longer made enough to survive on, looked for more work. “I sold flowers in the snow, newspapers on the street. I worked really hard. I endured years of struggle in the snow, sun, hot stove, all for my children.” There was no thought of looking for lawyers at that point.