Excerpt from Oct. 10, 2007 motion to re-open the asylum case of Rrustem Neza:
The Department of Homeland Security plans to drug Rrustem Neza
before putting him on the plane for deportation to Albania, so that
when he arrives he will not even be able to run away from the killers,
who will be waiting for him. DHS wants to drug Mr. Neza because he
prefers being alive in the Rolling Plains Detention Facility at Haskell,
Texas, indefinitely, to being dead forever in Albania.
On 1 October 2007 the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement filed
in the court for the Northern District of Texas, Abilene Division, a Complaint for
Injunctive Relief and Expedited Motion for a Preliminary Injunction Authorizing
Medical Treatment to Facilitate Defendant’s Removal, asking the district judge to
authorize the BICE to dope Mr. Neza so they can put him on an airplane without
protest. US v. Neza, Civ. No. 1-07CV0176-C. The BICE acknowledges in its
Complaint that Mr. Neza has now pending before the BIA a Motion to Reopen
filed by current counsel and before this Court of Appeals a petition for review of Amended Motion to Reopen on Account of Changed Circumstances the denial of the Motion to Reopen that previous counsel filed. When the BICE took Mr. Neza to the airport to deport him on 8 August 2007, he pleaded for his life so pitifully that the airline refused to allow him to board. The BICE claims,
“On several occasions, Neza has stated to an ICE Deportation Officer that he will
not voluntarily return to Albania.”
Indeed, Mr. Neza has been incarcerated for nine months at the Rolling Plains
Detention Facility at Haskell, Texas, and there is no end of his imprisonment in
sight. Mr. Neza easily could end his confinement by departing for Albania, but he
prefers the misery of the prison in Texas to death in Albania. The government
makes the astonishing argument that Mr. Neza’s motion to reopen should be
denied because “every delay works to the advantage of the deportable alien who
wishes merely to remain in the United States.” Department of Homeland
Security’s Opposition to Motion to Reopen, served on Petitioner 1 October, 2007.
In this case, every delay works to the advantage of the deportable alien who wishes
merely to remain alive. If the BICE succeeds in its suit to drug him and put him on
a flight to Albania, Mr. Neza will be too drowsy to run away from his assassins
when his flight arrives in Albania.
As the 2009 graduates of Liberty High School in Frisco, Texas begin their sophomore year of college under new stresses of time and study, they do not forget that their classmate Saad Nabeel never got to finish the first semester of his freshman year. And Nabeel’s immigration advocate Ralph Isenberg says the young man’s abrupt deportation last year was so unfair and illegal that he should be immediately restored to his college career in the USA.
Thanks to Nabeel’s energetic internet campaign seeking return to his American homeland, the young man’s deportation has been covered by reporters in Texas, Germany, and India. His open letter to President Barack Obama was recently published at The Huffington Post.
Pinak Joshi is one of Nabeel’s best friends and was able to take calls during some of the cruelest days of detention last year. Joshi is a sophomore in Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he is already doing independent experimentation on prostate cancer.
“Although I’m proud of all that I do, it is a very strenuous weight to hold at the age of 19,” says Joshi via email. “What happened to Saad showed me that this is a privileged kind of stress. Being a sophomore in college has changed how I look at the world. Thanks to my research experience and coursework, I’m more thorough with my responsibilities and I’m able to think about complex problems analytically.”
“Saad is missing out on all that,” says Joshi. “He’s missing out on the ridiculous volume of math problems he would get as an engineer. He’s missing the laughs, the good times, and the beauty that is in the struggle of leading a scholarly life. He’s missing out on making new friends and building a network that could help him in the future. Most of all, he has been denied the opportunity to pursue his dreams.”
At the College Station campus of Texas A&M University, another close friend of Nabeel, sophomore engineering student Chris Anderson, finds himself already caught up in three-day bouts of homework and tests.
“Being a sophomore in college is more than just a title of what age I am,” says Anderson, “it means that I was able to make it through a whole year on my own. Being able to manage a tough engineering curriculum while still having time to do other activities has helped teach me how to prioritize and manage my time better. If I hadn’t had these skills coming into my sophomore year then I would be behind and struggling in my classes.”
“When Saad’s first semester of his Freshman year of college was disrupted he lost not only his grades which he spent so much time and effort to keep up, but he also lost the whole Freshman experience and the ability to prove himself as an independent person,” says Anderson. “College is about more than just getting a degree, it’s about learning to grow as a person and getting that life experience, but because our government decided to deport him and interrupt his education he is missing a year of his life that he will never get back.”
In Bangladesh, Nabeel struggles with living conditions quite different from the college apartments that he enjoyed last year while attending the University of Texas, Arlington on full scholarship for engineering.
“It is very hot and humid here,” says Nabeel in a draft script that he is preparing for an update to his YouTube page. “The temperature is constantly above 100 degrees outside. The apartment I live in has no air conditioning. To make matters worse, the electricity stays off for upwards of 9 hours a day. Then there is the pollution. The air can make you sick here and some days I can barely get out of bed. I have also suffered several bouts of food poisoning. I hope you can better understand why I am so anxious to get home. Bangladesh is not home but rather a nightmare that I hope soon ends.”
To get his American dream back on track, Nabeel has been working with Dallas businessman and immigration advocate Ralph Isenberg. After a recent review of Nabeel’s case, Isenberg is arguing that US immigration authorities contradicted themselves when they first separated Nabeel from his mother and then failed to treat him as an unaccompanied minor.
On Isenberg’s reading, immigration law defines minors as younger than 21. Therefore, when Nabeel at age 18 was separated from his mother, immigration authorities should have transferred him to Health and Human Services (HHS), where he would have been entitled to education and legal representation, both denied to him under supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Saad’s detention was unlawful and ICE knew it,” says Isenberg via telephone. “Immigration law defines a minor as 21 years old or less. And there are two types of minors, accompanied and unaccompanied. Saad coming to America at age three was clearly an accompanied minor the whole time.”
ICE authorities in New York separated Nabeel from his mother on the day before Thanksgiving, 2009. ICE then detained the 18-year-old in an adult facility and refused the young man’s requests to communicate with his parents who were both under ICE detention. ICE could have allowed communication between the young man and his parents. They could have transferred the younger Nabeel to detention with his father in Haskell, Texas. Or they could have released the 18-year-old to the care of his uncle in New York.
At no point during their 15-year immigration saga in America were the Nabeel family “illegal,” explains the younger Nabeel in his upcoming YouTube video. They arrived with visas in 1994 and were very close to finalizing Green Cards in 2009. It was not the application of immigration law that forced the family to Bangladesh in 2010, but the misapplication of law by authorities who misused their powers.
“There is no gray area in the law,” explains Isenberg. “Unaccompanied minors must be handed over to HHS. ICE knew it, but refused to do that. They took a minor and put him into an adult detention facility without protections of law that minors are entitled to. There are halfway houses for unaccompanied minors. HHS has definitive responsibilities to provide education and social services. Saad was denied all that.
“When Saad asked for help he was called a security risk. ICE not only could have but should have paroled Saad to his uncle,” says Isenberg. “I dare say had that happened he would have never been deported. ICE broke the law by ignoring Saad’s request for political asylum while detained. They broke the law, put him in jail, threw away the key, put him on the plane, and there was no due process whatsoever.”
On a sweltering day in late August Nabeel received an email with a link to the just-released Taylor Swift video. When he clicked on the link he was informed that the video was not available for viewing in the Bangladesh region.
“It sucks,” he emailed, “because I had tickets to her concert twice but couldn’t go because my parents said, ‘we don’t know if immigration will extend our time that long’.” The family were living lawfully and obediently according to the directions that ICE had communicated. What else could keep the young Nabeel from twice buying his Taylor Swift tickets in advance?
Of course, eight hours after the first email a second one arrived from the computer saavy Nabeel. In all caps it read “just watched it, greatest music video ever!” How do you get to be more of an American kid than that?
Once again we celebrate the ultimate importance of this day in our history as a race. We are celebrating the truth of our ancestors who has made it possible for us to express to this world who we truly are and the reasons why freedom and justice continue to be a part of our lives.
It is written and told that Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, during the early morning of September 16, rang church bells and called on our indigenous ancestors of Dolores to rise from oppression, darkness, hunger, and injustice to proclaim to the world the independence of their nation. Sacred destinies from past writings constantly reveal that we as Mexicans, Hispanics, and Latinos would continue to rise until freedom and justice would become a part of our daily lives.
Within a period of months, Hidalgo’s people had swelled to 100,000 strong – the largest army raised since the Aztecs (Mexicas), our ancient ancestors who made possible this uprising with hoes, machetes, clubs, outrage, faith, and a most spiritual desire for liberation that no one in the world would take again. In reality it is called the love of liberation.
It is historically written in ancient writings that we as a people and race would continue to rise and take back our God-given freedom and justice. On October 12, shortly after September 16, the battle was joined at Las Cruces, against the strong forces of the Spanish government. The entire world became aware that our people had risen from the ashes of injustice, slavery, oppression, and imprisonment, demanding the return of their land. Hidalgo, announcing for seven months the time to rise, was captured in Chihuaua. He was shot and decapitated by the Spanish government.
Here I remain confined in oppressive prisons maintaining the honor, valor, and courage to share that our history has just begun. Throughout the Southwest we seek political and spiritual power like never before. We witness the confinement and oppression of our sisters and brothers, concluding, as written in our ancient writings, that we would return to our promised land and share “El Grito de Dolores” from our hearts.
It is written that as we seek freedom and justice, the power of our spirituality will be present unlike before in the 21st century. This spiritual power is the rebirth of our search for God-given human rights and land.
Know who you are and what people before you died for. Always remember that our history is far from becoming a thing of the past. It is more alive, more contentious, and demanding than ever. A famous late Hispanic professor once stated, “A living present time cannot exist if the past is dead. Our history is the past, and very much alive in the present.”
Jose Luis Villarreal, an El Pasoan represented by Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project (PCRP), reached a monumental settlement with Los Gallegos Mexican Restaurant resulting in the payment of $32,500 in damages.
In February, PCRP filed a lawsuit on behalf of Villarreal (pictured above, front right) asking for thousands of dollars in unpaid overtime pay and other damages from the restaurant owner.
“I worked for Los Gallegos for nine years and always worked over forty hours per week. I asked the owner of Los Gallegos many times during my employment why he was not paying us our overtime hours,” said Mr. Villarreal, “In the end he fired me for standing up for my rights. In the restaurant industry, many workers are working from forty up to ninety-hour weeks without any overtime pay. It is time that restaurant owners pay their employees the overtime they deserve.”
After six months of litigation, Los Gallegos’ owner and Mr. Villarreal agreed to settle for an amount well over Mr. Villarreal’s unpaid overtime wages.
Mr. Villarreal, now a member of the local group, the Labor Justice Committee, is proud of the settlement. “People didn’t think I should fight for my wages. They thought it wouldn’t be worth the trouble and that I didn’t have rights. But this settlement shows that workers shouldn’t be scared of their employers. We can fight and we can win!” Mr. Villarreal exclaimed.
Restaurant employees must receive at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and overtime pay for all hours worked over 40 hours per week. Overtime pay is time and a half of the promised hourly rate.
“Mr. Villarreal was a victim of systematic and severe overtime violations. This settlement should be a signal to the rest of the restaurant industry in El Paso that it is worth it to pay overtime to your employees or you will have to pay much more in court costs and fees,” said Chris Benoit, an attorney with Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Project.
MoPress 