He has a work permit, a coffee shop – and an ICE ankle monitor: ‘Is this America?’ | US immigration
Dr Assim Alkhawaja is Palestinian and grew up in Saudi Arabia. He owns Sands Coffee Roasters in San Diego. He has a PhD from the University of San Francisco. He was arrested by ICE when he drove someone to Camp Pendleton. (As the article explains, ICE have been working at military bases to arrest foreigners who accompany soldiers.) He received the ankle monitor that previously was mostly given to sex offenders and the like, after his release from immigration detention.
The article doesn't give his reason for applying for asylum and not wanting to return to Saudi Arabia, but you can roughly guess if you have eyes and read between the lines.
Excerpts:
>Inside the facility, Alkhawaja said, officials took the rest of his belongings: his hat, belt, jacket. He was given a uniform to wear for the duration of his stay: navy blue, with “DETAINEE” printed on the back in big block letters. He was then assigned to a room with eight other people, where the fear was palpable. Alkhawaja and the others didn’t know when they would be released, or if they would be transferred to other detention centers across the country.
>Alkhawaja spent the next week settling into a kind of routine. Wake up. Go to the bathroom (detainees couldn’t use the restroom during the night, he said). Stand out in the yard. Watch the Fox News that was being played on the communal TVs. Return to the rooms to be counted. The drinking water smelled and tasted bad, he said, and it felt like everything cost money: phone calls, snacks, hygiene products. CoreCivic, the company that manages Otay Mesa, maintained in an email that the “safety, health and wellbeing of the individuals entrusted to our care is our top priority,” and that their water comes from “the same municipal source used by the surrounding San Diego community”.
>How Alkhawaja was even able to be put in removal proceedings, while having a valid work permit and an open asylum case, comes down to a widening “grey area” between what is considered lawful and unlawful in ever-evolving immigration law, Johnson said. Asylum seekers can apply for and receive a specific type of work permit while their cases are pending, she said, but obtaining that permit doesn’t mean they technically have “legal status” in the US.
>“It puts people in a bad spot, where they’re like: ‘But I did the right thing, I applied for asylum within the timeframe, and it’s not my fault that it’s pending,’” she said. But that’s the unfortunate truth, Sydney Johnson [an associate attorney who works at an immigration law firm in San Diego and Alkhawaja's lawyer], added: “You can do everything right and you can still get screwed.”
>In response to questions about how Alkhawaja’s arrest on the military base unfolded, the DHS spokesperson, who described him as “a criminal illegal alien from Saudi Arabia”, argued that Alkhawaja had also been arrested for “disorderly conduct” more than two decades prior.
>“All of his claims will be heard by a judge,” the spokesperson said. “Despite his criminal history, this illegal alien was released on bond pending immigration proceedings.”
>The fact that DHS had seemingly dug up an old unrelated arrest, and one that did not end with any convictions, was deeply unnerving to Alkhawaja.
>He explained that in 2002, while on a trip to the US, he and an American friend were enjoying a night out in San Diego when they started chatting with a woman, who Alkhawaja later pieced together was an undercover police officer and was posing as a sex worker. Suddenly police cars surrounded the duo and they were arrested, but Alkhawaja said he was swiftly released once they got to the station. The whole situation was extremely confusing, he said, because he had been a bystander to the initial conversation and, to his knowledge, was never actually charged with a crime.
>Johnson confirmed that Alkhawaja has no criminal convictions on his record.
>“I believe they are bringing this up to try to justify their actions,” she said of the DHS comments. “The reality is a 2002 arrest when he was visiting his family here, without more, does not bar him from seeking asylum.”