Apprehensive about his immigration status, in August 2009, Hussain once more attempted to tackle the legal issues he had been ignoring for 14 years. He consulted with Usman Ahmad, an immigration attorney in Long Island City, and paid him a $6000 retainer fee. Hussain heard about Ahmad through a friend.
Ahmad, who has a background in corporate law, said he noticed a need for South Asian lawyers when he started working for his father’s friend’s law firm in Jackson Heights back in 2000. “The only people who would come to me were Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Indian,” he said. And even though he didn’t have any experience in immigration law, many South Asian clients turned to him anyway. He claims to be a self-taught immigration lawyer.
Sabiha and Hussain said they gave Ahmad their children’s medical records and other confidential documents for the case. “We just asked that he didn’t put us in any risk or trouble,” Sabiha recalled, and she says he promised that he wouldn’t.
Sabiha said Ahmad reassured the couple that there were many positive aspects to their case that he would present in court. “He said we paid taxes, we had children who were US citizens, and we had come to the country legally,” Sabiha said.
Ahmad filed a motion to reopen the case in August 2009. But the judge denied the case and an “order of removal” was issued to Hussain, Sabiha, and their eldest daughter, Rezwana, a 19-year-old college student who was also undocumented. Suddenly, they were to be deported for over-staying their visa.
But Hussain still had opportunities to appeal his case through several judicial bodies. Ahmad did not tell Hussain that he could appeal within 30 days to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). Based in Virginia, the BIA is the highest administrative body that reviews decisions by the immigration judges and Department of Homeland Security. If the BIA rejects the case, a next stage of appeal would have been the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
But if Ahmad knew about these avenues of appeal, he never told the family. Maybe he figured they could never afford it. In any case, 15 months later, in November 2010, a notice from ICE labelled “bag and baggage” arrived in Hussain’s mailbox.
It was an order from ICE informing Hussain to bring a piece of luggage containing personal property before being deported. Ahmad, who took Hussain to the immigration department at 26 Federal Plaza, managed to get a temporary suspension on the deportation order.
Today, Ahmad explains that lawyers are just buying time when a temporary suspension is administered. “The bag and baggage notice is one of the most dangerous letters my clients receive,” he said.
But that’s not what he said back then; at least that’s not how Sabiha remembers it. “He told us not to worry about it,” Sabiha said.
At the end of the temporary suspension, Hussain received another notice on March 2, 2011, the day he was taken into custody and placed in detention. That particular morning felt like any other for Hussain’s second daughter Sabreena.
She recalled sitting with her dad in the kitchen before she had to go to school. “We had breakfast together. My dad mentioned that the lawyer would be taking him to Federal Plaza again. I told him everything would go fine,” she said. But Sabiha remembered that this second trip raised suspicion in her mind.
Once the couple reached the lawyer’s office in Long Island City he reassured them that it was part of procedure to go to the Federal Plaza every few months. “He said the visit would only take 10 minutes. We had an on-going case so there were no risks involved; if Hussain didn’t go then there would be problems,” Sabiha said.
When they arrived, Ahmad told her to stay outside. In the past she was always by Hussain’s side, but this time the lawyer didn’t allow her inside.
Hussain said he had the sense that his lawyer didn’t understand what was going on any more than he did. At 7pm, after a whole day, Ahmad informed Hussain that he wouldn’t be released. “The officers took me to a small jail, I think it was on Fulton Street. I couldn’t really tell because it was dark outside,” Hussain said. He was then taken to a medical facility within the premises of the jail where doctors ran tests on him.
Sabiha had stood outside for most of the day. Tired of waiting, she went home. Then, she received a call on her cell from Ahmed at 7pm. “He told me the bad news,” Sabiha said. “The sky fell on me, when he told me that,” she said. Her daughter Sabreena recalled the misery. “I heard my mom scream ‘we don’t know where your father is.’ It was pretty harsh. I was panicking,” she said.
Back at the jail, at 9pm that night, the officers put Hussain in a van with a few others. “I didn’t know where they were taking us. All I remember was that it was raining heavily,” Hussain said. They drove for about an hour.
Sabiha remembers running in the heavy rain back to Ahmed’s office for answers. “He said he did his best, but the officers wouldn’t release him.” Ahmed advised her to wait through the evening.
Meanwhile, Hussain found himself in a line outside a large yellow building with barbed wires surrounding it. With the little Spanish he knew, he asked a Latino inmate where they were. “He told me that we were at the Elizabeth Detention Center,” Hussain said.
The Elizabeth Detention Center is located off Routes 1 and 9 in New Jersey, near a sea of warehouses. It’s a 300-bed prison run by a privately owned company, Corrections Corporations of America (CCA) that has contracts with several federal clients. ICE was paying CCA close to $90 a day per prisoner.
The facility holds undocumented immigrants, mostly asylum seekers, according to Usman Ahmad, who is no longer involved in Hussain’s case, but who said he makes frequent visits to the facility to visit other clients. According to ICE, the Elizabeth facility is “a temporary detention centre for individuals who are waiting for their immigration status to be determined or who are awaiting repatriation.”
Inside the facility, the officers took Hussain’s fingerprints, and had him sign documents he couldn’t read. Again, he was examined by doctors. “Then I showered, and was given a uniform to wear.” This process took three hours. “I thought to myself, well I guess I have to get used to being here.”
At 1am he was sent to a big room that fit close to 40 people. He was given a bed. The officers shut off the lights. When he lay down, Hussain recalled feeling dizzy. “The room was spinning, all of Elizabeth spun around me. I couldn’t figure out if I was spinning, or maybe the building was spinning.”
Back in Queens the next morning, Sabiha returned to Ahmad’s office with her daughters, who are fluent in English; but still there were no updates on her husband or his whereabouts. “He said there was nothing he could do. He wasn’t really paying much mind to the situation. He was treating it like a normal matter,” she said. “Never mind a family has just been torn apart and he treats it like it’s nothing.”
Sabiha said she never went back to his office after that. And after having paid $6,000, it was hard to trust another lawyer again. “You couldn’t tell who was speaking the truth or telling a lie,” she said. Also, since she didn’t know how to read or speak English well, the legal matters were confusing. But Sabiha’s daughters who knew English, persisted. They helped their mother research lawyers online, and sought advice from family and friends.
Over the next 10 days Sabiha said she spent over a $1000 dollars from what little money she had left to pay several different lawyers’ initial consultation fees. “I just wanted the right advice,” she said. She didn’t receive the answers she needed.
Then, on March 12, 2011, a family friend recommended that Sabiha speak with yet another attorney, Amy Gell. Gell is a partner with Gell & Gell Law Offices. Gell, who specialises in political asylum cases, has been practicing law for 15 years according to The New York State Unified Court system’s attorney directory.
Sabiha had heard great things about this law firm. What she didn’t know was that Amy Gell was under investigation by the Attorney General’s office, and that within a year she would be censured (A censure is a public reprimand issued by the Attorney Grievance Committee for a lawyer’s misconduct in practice).
According to the March 1, 2012 New York Law Journal, between December 2005 and August 2007, Gell missed more than half of her court deadlines – 28 out of 41 client cases. The Appellate Division publicly censured her on February 12, 2012.
Gell guaranteed Sabiha two things: She promised to locate her husband and to get him released immediately. Convinced, Sabiha instantly requested financial help from family members. Sabiha paid Gell $3000 on the day of their first visit.
Within hours Gell had located Hussain at the Elizabeth Detention Center by tracing his alien ID number. By chance, on the same day, Taimur was allowed to call his family to let them know he was okay. He broke into tears on the phone. The children cried on the other end of the line. “We received some kind of mental peace to know where he was at least,” Sabiha said.
Then, just three days after that phone call with his wife and daughters on March 15, Hussain was abruptly taken to the airport to be deported. Despite his confusion and anxiety, once at the airport, he noticed an immigration officer speaking on the phone. Fifteen minutes later, Hussain was back in the van, being returned to the detention center. “All I could think was Allah had some kind of mercy on me,” Hussain recalled.
While Hussain languished in prison, Sabiha faced her own struggles. She had to feed her children without her husband’s paycheck. The family couldn’t afford rent, so they left their home in Astoria and moved into the one-bedroom apartment of a family friend, Jasmeen Chowdhury, just a few blocks away.
All four of them slept on Jasmeen’s sofa bed in the living room at night. “The first few months were as if someone had died. We didn’t have much of an appetite,” Sabiha remembered. All she could think about was getting her husband released. But her friend Jasmeen encouraged the family to stay strong. She cooked for the kids. But whenever she cooked Hussain’s favourite dish “goru mangsho,” a beef curry seasoned with coriander and tamarind spices, the kids would cry.
The middle daughter, Sabreena had recurring nightmares. “I had dreams about bad news coming,” she said. Anytime the family was out, and a police officer was close by, Sabreena would run to hide her mom from the officer’s sight.
She also suffered severe stomach pains and nausea. As a result, she missed school. “It affected my grades, I had the citywide test coming up and I wasn’t concentrating,” said Sabreena. In the end, she didn’t pass the exam; and the repeated absences from school have delayed her from graduating middle school.
Sabiha, meanwhile, began taking anti-depressants for her constant anxiety. Her blood pressure, and cholesterol levels shot up. “She was almost bedridden,” Jasmeen said. “But I kept telling her, she had to be strong for her husband.” What made matters worse for Sabiha was her own undocumented status. It meant she couldn’t visit her husband at the Elizabeth Detention Center.
According to the Applied Research Center there are 4.5 million US citizens, under 18, with at least one undocumented parent. This number has increased in the past decade.
Inside, Hussain worried about his daughter’s daily activities. “I wondered if they were eating right and if they were going to school on time. “Thinking about them kept me up all night,” he said. Sanjana, the youngest daughter, recalled the birthdays her dad missed. “He missed mine, my sisters, and my mom’s. We were sad,” she said.
TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART III