Afghan Immigrant Fights Deportation
February 18, 2005


By Leslie Casimir
Daily News Staff Writer


Her brother was murdered by the Taliban, and her father is still missing and presumed dead in Afghanistan, but U.S. officials believe it is now safe to deport Samira Rahman - a Long Island resident with two U.S.-born children - to the country she fled long before 9/11.

Rahman, 30, a Levittown housewife, is fighting to stay with her family in New York. She is now a prisoner at the immigration detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., and could be placed on a plane to Kabul in 30 days, her lawyer, Darryl Wynn, announced at a Manhattan press conference yesterday.

Wynn has petitioned the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to defer any action against his client until her husband, Abdul Rahman, 29, can obtain a green card for her. Afghanistan native Abdul Rahman was granted political asylum, but he has been waiting for the government to issue him his own green card for three years.

"I'm lost, confused and shocked," said Abdul Rahman, who operates a food cart on Pearl St. in lower Manhattan. "I don't know what will happen if she gets deported - I don't know what to do with the children."

Yesterday, Senator Charles Schumer issued a statement asking immigration officials to grant her a reprieve.

"We can't pull a family apart," Schumer said.

Immigration officials arrested Samira Rahman in her home last month, prying her from her screaming children, Zikira Rahman, 2, and Zaky Rahman, 1.

Her lawyers believe that she is a victim of circumstance. By the time her asylum case was heard by immigration officials, Afghanistan's government had changed hands. In 2003, she was denied political asylum because the Taliban had been removed from power, Judge John Opaciuch concluded. And since the fall of the Taliban, there have been improvements in human rights conditions there.

Pamela Falk, a law professor at the City University of New York who specializes in asylum, said women are still routinely victimized in the country despite the U.S.-installed government. Manizha Naderi, director of Flushing, Queens-based Women for Afghan Women, said women who have no husbands or other family members to claim them usually end up in jail.

"I have personally met the president, Hamed Karzai, but that does not change the political climate of Afghanistan," said Falk, as Zaky Rahman wailed in the background. "If we could control what is going on in Afghanistan, the United States would have Osama Bin Laden."

Michael Gilhooly, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs, said Samira Rahman was given the opportunity to leave the country voluntarily, but failed to do so. Now, her time is up.

"ICE is moving ahead with the process of enforcing the court order of removal," he said.