Contacted via email, Deputy Consul General Md Shahedul Islam of the Consulate General of Bangladesh in New York told the Dhaka Tribune: “... We came to know that a Bangladeshi student has been arrested after arriving at JFK airport in New York. As soon as we got the information, directed by...consul general, my Third Secretary Asib Uddin Ahmed and I went to visit JFK airport...on February 1, 2017. I talked to the JFK airport authority regarding this issue, but they did not want to disclose anything on it.”
He added that they were in contact with the US Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security.
The Bangladeshi student, who entered the US “legally,” was detained on December 19, 2016, right after landing at the airport.
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“Our client was detained ... just one month before Trump was inaugurated. Parole RELEASE Hearing Tomorrow,” Iman Boukadoum, a lawyer and director of community partnerships at the Interfaith Center of New York, wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
Boukadoum, who is dealing with the case, also said her client “entered LEGALLY on an F1 student visa and was interrogated by Customs and Border Protection for 12 hours in English, a language he does not speak well, after a 30-hour flight from Bangladesh.”
She described the facility he was being held at as “one of the WORST PRIVATELY-OWNED (CAA) Immigration Detention Facilities in the Nation [sic]” where they “threatened to beat him up, shouted at him aggressively in a language he did not speak and were humiliating him with constant body searches.”
The outcome of the parole hearing was yet to be known.
Sunday, March 16, 2025
