Afghan Woman Awaits Decision On Deportation
February 16, 2005

By Robert Polner
Staff Writer



Samira Rahman, a married mother of two young U.S.-born sons who fled Afghanistan from Taliban rule in 1997, sits in the immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, N.J., facing the prospect of deportation.

Five weeks ago, federal immigration agents arrested Rahman, 30, at 5 a.m. at her Long Island home, said her husband, Abdul Rahman, a sidewalk coffee vendor in the financial district, who was working at the time.

Since Sept. 11, the unannounced knock at the front door in the middle of the night is a much-feared thing among New York area immigrants from Arab countries.

But Muslim women, as opposed to their husbands or sons, rarely have been the focus of nationally tightened enforcement of immigration laws.

"It's very surprising to me, and it's horrible, actually," said Manizha Naderi, director of Women for Afghan Women, a 3-year-old humanitarian organization in Manhattan that plans to stage a news conference today in Manhattan to criticize her handling. "This kind of treatment is not usually for females, especially Afghans."

All the same, immigration authorities are seeking to deport Samira Rahman. Her attorney, Darryl Wynn, asked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement two weeks ago to consider releasing her on humanitarian grounds. Wynn's request mentioned that his client has young children -- ages 1 and 2 -- and would face dangers as a lone female with "absolutely no family ties in Afghanistan."

In her native country, Rahman was a secretary at Afghanistan's sole airline, a job that placed her family at odds with the rising fundamentalist Islamic regime, the Taliban. That government kidnapped her father, whose fate remains unknown, and killed her brother, according to her husband.

She barely escaped and resided in a refugee camp in Pakistan, then made it to the United States in May 2001, with the help of an aunt who left the camp ahead of her.

Afghanistan-born Abdul Rahman, whom she subsequently met, had won political asylum here in the 1990s. But his wife was denied political asylum because her initial application, as well as her unsuccessful appeal this past July, followed the fall of the Taliban. In both instances, the judges noted that the Taliban was no longer in power.

Her lawyer's hope now is that U.S. officials might give her a reprieve that would let her remain in this country until she can get a green card through her husband.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Kerry Gill had no immediate comment on the case.

"She is doing badly," her husband said after visiting her at the jail. "Her blood pressure is already high, and it is going up. ... When I speak to her, she is shaking and crying."