How does ICE want to thank a Sudanese refugee for providing crucial evidence that helped lock up a passport counterfeiting ring, one that aided a woman’s escape from the U.S. after she allegedly murdered her own baby? By deporting him:
[Khalid] Zafrain came to the U.S. years ago from Sudan. Terrorists there had slaughtered his family and enslaved him, according to 2016 court filings from his criminal defense lawyer, Deborah Caldwell-Bono. After coming to the U.S., Zafrain worked as an auto mechanic in the Roanoke area of Virginia. He was arrested in early 2014 while working as a drug mule carrying 59 grams of heroin—a substantial amount. He could have spent up to twenty years in prison.
After being let out on bond, three Sudanese men and one Sudanese woman approached Zafrain with an offer: For about $1,000, they would help him get a fake passport to escape the country. Instead of taking the men up on their offer, Zafrain told the prosecutor working on his case. He was eventually connected with Hunter Durham, a special agent with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
Zafrain, hoping to be showed some mercy in court, was outfitted with recording equipment by agents, and at one point “the men confirmed to Zafrain that they got a fake passport for a woman facing charges for murdering her five-month-old child. She escaped from the U.S. and still hasn’t been caught.”
While Zafrain was unsuccessful in obtaining a fake passport from the group, he did tape “enough conversations to provide pivotal evidence in Durham’s investigation. All four people were convicted or plead guilty.” Following a recommendation from U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, a judge sentenced Zafrain to time served—eight months—and he was free.
That is, until ICE came knocking.
Being convicted of a drug crime can make immigrants subject to deportation—even refugees who get shot at after helping ICE. And about a month ago, ICE agents arrested Zafrain. They are pushing for his deportation back to Sudan.
An ICE spokesperson told The Daily Beast the agency hasn’t had second thoughts about deporting its own informant.
“Officers with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations arrested Khalid Zafrain, a citizen and national of Sudan, March 27 in Roanoke, Virginia, for immigration violations,” emailed Carissa Cutrell, a spokesperson for the agency. “He is currently detained at Farmville Detention Center in Virginia, pending removal proceedings. Zafrain has a felony drug conviction for possession of heroin with intent to distribute.”
Rob Robertson, Zafrain’s immigration lawyer, told The Daily Beast the ICE statement surprised him a bit.
“It’s interesting that they don’t say anything about how he helped them,” he said.
Durham, the agent who worked with Zafrain, told The Daily Beast he had no comment on his informant’s impending deportation.
Today, Zafrain is in ICE detention and again in fear of his life (he already survived a drive-by shooting after a local paper published his name during the counterfeiters’ trials) because he “could be a target for retaliation from fellow detainees since he was an informant for ICE.”
This isn’t an isolated incident, either. “Immigration attorneys who spoke with The Daily Beast said Zafrain’s case isn’t unheard of. Over the years, there have been numerous reported instances of HSI agents promising to help immigrants in exchange for cooperation—and then breaking those promises”:
The Asylumist, a legal blog by attorney Jason Dzubow that closely monitors refugee and asylum issues, wrote in May of last year that several of his immigrant clients worked with law enforcement officers on investigations, and in turn were promised special visas for informants, called S visas. But those visas never materialized. One of his clients, he wrote, faced danger in her home country as retaliation for her work with the U.S. government. Despite that, agents still didn’t help her get a visa.
“What particularly bothers me about this case is that my client’s cooperation led directly to her fear of harm, but the U.S. government didn’t care,” Dzubow wrote. “When they got what they wanted from her, the law enforcement agents dropped her like yesterday’s news.”
“It seems to me that any alien who relies on the goodwill of the government in an S visa case is being taken for a fool,” he added.