Despite being accompanied by Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH), former American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) president David Leopold, and Mahoning County Republican Party vice chairwoman Tracey Winbush, small business owner and dad Amer ‘Al’ Adi Othman was taken into custody when he tried to follow the rules by going to his scheduled appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):
When Adi showed up for his 9 a.m. appointment, Leopold said, “The first thing out of their mouth was, ‘We’re not going to beat around the bush. We’re going to take him into custody.’”
Congressman Tim Ryan was at the hearing.
“This is absolutely insane,” he said. “He would have bought a ticket and packed his bags. He would have left. They put him jail. They’re treating him like an animal.”
Adi had previously been ordered to leave the U.S. on January 7, however, “following an outcry from the community and a bipartisan effort from local politicians,” immigration officials backed down. But less than two weeks later they had a change of mind and took the man—who has been in the U.S. for nearly four decades—into custody. Leopold called ICE’s actions “the brazen humiliation, degradation, dehumanizing of a man who’s an American in every way but a piece of paper.”
Now sitting in a Geauga County, Ohio, jail, a devastated Adi is vowing to hunger strike until he’s released as his family, advocates, and community continue to fight for him. “Al posed no flight risk, reported to each and every immigration meeting and had no criminal record,” said a statement from his family. “It is an assault on his dignity, due process and the mental and emotional sanity of an American family”:
Adi is the owner of the Downtown Convenience Store and Deli and has been in the United States for 39 years.
Family and friends have gathered at Circle Hookah — the bar in the back of Adi’s store — in solidarity.
Adi’s wife, Fidda Musleh, who was also at the hearing, said, “Why would you trick us to say he has a stay, get us here, just to put him behind bars? What’s the reason behind it? Was he a threat to anybody? They have no answers.”
Musleh did talk briefly with her husband on the phone through glass.
“He said, ‘Just take care of the girls,'” she said, then began to cry.
Just days ago, ICE’s deportation of another dad who had lived in the U.S. for nearly three decades also made national news:
Too old to qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), 39-year-old Jorge Garcia was deported Monday to a country he had not stepped foot in for nearly three decades. Garcia is married to a U.S. citizen, has two U.S. citizen kids, and no criminal record. It didn’t matter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who told the man during his regular check-in this past November to prepare for deportation. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this week, his heartbroken family and supporters accompanied him to Detroit Metropolitan Airport to say goodbye.
“The arrest of Amer Othman is a shameful failure of justice,” said Congressman Ryan in a statement. “Treating an individual with no criminal record who poses zero flight risk like an animal flies in the face of the American values Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is supposedly defending.”
“Our broken immigration system is hurting families and eroding our moral authority,” he continued. “We must do better. Not only for Amer, but for the countless other families in similar situations. For the 800,000 DREAMers who live in a state of limbo, wracked with fear and uncertainty, because of this Administration’s lack of empathy. Every American should be angered by what I witnessed today and what individuals are experiencing every day under the Trump Administration. This fight is not over."
