Afghan Mother Can't Stay
February 27, 2005

By Robert Polner

A Democratic U.S. senator spoke out for her, and so did a Republican Long Island congressman.

But those two powerful voices couldn't help the Long Island mother of two with her last-ditch bid to avoid deportation to Afghanistan.

Michael C. Anderson, acting field office director with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, notified Samira Rahman's lawyer last week that the agency has rejected her bid on humanitarian grounds to stay in this country with her family.

Rahman, 30, can at any time now be taken from the Elizabeth, N.J., jail, to which she was confined after a 5 a.m. arrest in her Levittown home six weeks ago, and put on a plane to Kabul.

Women for Afghan Women, a 3-year-old humanitarian group in Manhattan that took up Rahman's cause, said that females who live in Afghanistan without their husbands or a male relative are at risk of being killed by lingering Taliban factions. That is why thousands of women and children live in jails turned to subsistence shelters throughout the war-scarred country.

Rahman's husband, Abdul, nonetheless is likely to stay behind with their children, ages 1 and 2, as he waits for a decision on his permanent resident application. If he were to leave the country right
now, he might not be allowed back, said Manizha Naderi of Women for Afghan Women.

"For her and her family, it's a tragic and cold-hearted ruling," Naderi said.

U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), who spoke out on Rahman's behalf after a Feb. 17 Newsday article on the case, said through his spokesman that he will continue to seek a way to help. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) had called as well for Rahman to be allowed to stay with her family.

Davar Yusufi, an attorney with Citarella, Spicacci, Wynn in Manhattan, said the office was working to file an appeal on constitutional grounds in a federal court.

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

Some observers have refused to give up hope on Rahman's case.

"There has to be hope, because any court review will find that she does have a well-founded fear of persecution," said Pamela Falk, professor of international law and trade at the City University School
of Law. "The [Afghan] government, as it is, is not in control of the Taliban forces that killed her brother, disappeared her father and threatened her."