TRIBUNE SPECIAL REPORT: TOSSED OUT OF AMERICA

Forced to return to their countries, many men leave behind anxious relatives and find themselves without work in homelands that seem oddly unfamiliar, with little chance of ever going back to America.

By Flynn McRoberts, Liz Sly and Cam Simpson
Tribune staff reporters

NEW YORK -- Suleman Faqih was jolted awake just before dawn last January, when federal agents entered his bedroom and stuck a flashlight in his face. "Get up!" they told him as he lay in bed. "Let's go!"

Bleary-eyed, the 23-year-old complied, pulling on jeans and a sweater. The agents handcuffed him and led him into the hallway of his family's home in Queens, where his mother stood in her nightgown. She, too, was cuffed.

As he was taken away from the three-story brick town house he grew up in after coming to America at the age of 10, Faqih hoped it was all a terrible case of mistaken identity, that he'd soon be back home. Back to his bedroom, with the Aerosmith sticker on the side of his Dell computer. Back to the cell phone store he and his cousin had just opened on the Upper West Side.

But Faqih did not go home. In July, after 185 days in jail, he was shuffled onto a plane filled with other deportees--75 men the Tribune tracked to Pakistan to gauge
the impact of the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 crackdown against illegal immigrants from predominantly Muslim nations.

Now he's adrift and bewildered in the violent metropolis of Karachi, staying with relatives who are nervous about letting him leave the house alone.

The young man who played youth football and used to belt out the American national anthem for his family does his best to keep the advice of the older siblings he
left behind in New York: Keep your mouth shut.

His Queens accent, his clothes, his confident demeanor all say America--not a good thing in Karachi, home to some of the most militantly anti-U.S. Islamic
organizations in Pakistan. "I love the American way of life, but some don't," Faqih said. "And if you try to defend America, that can create a problem."

Suleman Faqih is collateral damage in America's war on terrorism.

The stories of Faqih and the other men on the July flight to Pakistan reflect not only the selective nature of the government's new immigration initiatives, but the toll
they have taken on individuals and families.

A wave of deportations sent these men off to uncertain futures, often leaving families without their sole breadwinners. Children who are U.S. citizens are now half a
world away from their fathers. Wives who remain in the U.S. illegally have been pushed further into the underground economy, taking any job they can get to feed
their children.

Nearly two years later, the Bush administration's immigration crackdown has yet to yield a single public charge of terrorism, though officials say they have identified a
handful of men with unspecified ties to terrorism.

A report released last week by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund examined 219 deportation cases after men from Muslim nations complied
with a new requirement to register with the government. About 1 in 3 left wives or children behind, the group found.

At least a dozen of Faqih's fellow passengers aboard the July flight from upstate New York to Islamabad were being deported for criminal offenses. But the vast
majority of the men violated the nation's civil immigration laws to enter or stay in the U.S. Many became productive, tax-paying residents building their piece of
America.

For millions of illegal immigrants, such rule-breaking is a fact of life and to this day poses little threat to them remaining in the U.S. But now it's a ticket to deportation
for men from Muslim countries.

Faqih's mother had filed a fraudulent application for political asylum, a problem unknown to Faqih until he found himself in a New Jersey jail last winter. But it was
more than this violation that led to the deportation of Faqih and his mother; the agents tracked them down at their home because of immigration policies that were
implemented in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Bush administration says that, working with limited resources, it is doing all it can to ensure the nation's security. Even some Pakistani-Americans approve.

"They should have been sent back," said Chicago travel agency owner Fakhra Khan, who grew up in Islamabad. "But it should be done to all the others as well--the
Ukrainians, the Polish, Bosnians, Mexicans.

"Pakistanis are the ones bearing the brunt of this policy."

Back in their homeland, many of the deportees recognize the U.S. government's need to prevent another terrorist attack. Yet they and others wonder how splitting
up families like the Faqihs makes America safer.

"The parents clearly weren't terrorists," said Cheryl David, one of the attorneys for the Faqihs. "They just wanted to better their children's lives. That's why they all
come--to have a life we take for granted simply by virtue of where we were born."

A father's despair

A mixture of grief and guilt bows Suleman Faqih's father.

For months, Ishaq Khan was too distraught to leave his New York City home, thinking only of how his wife, Naima, and youngest child sat in detention cells while
he remained in the comfort of their home in Queens.

Shortly after their January arrest, he went to the immigration office in lower Manhattan to ask a simple question: "Why not pick up me and [yet] pick up my son and
my wife?"

"Mr. Khan," he said he was told, "your name is not in the computer."

In his despair, he neglected his once-thriving fish import-export business.

He converted a spare bedroom into a sort of shrine to his deported son, surrounding himself with anything that reminds him of Suleman: the bookcases that once
lined his bedroom walls; the television on which Suleman watched his pro-wrestling favorite, The Hitman; the carpet from Ikea that Khan gave his son on his 21st
birthday.

He insists on sleeping on his son's old bed.

Ishaq was a successful businessman in Pakistan, but he and his wife left for the U.S. so Suleman's three older siblings could attend college here. His wife led the
family in making the cultural transition to America. For several years, Naima was a member of a Mary Kay Cosmetics sales team in Queens.

Their fourth and youngest child, Suleman, quickly embraced his new homeland as well--the freedoms, the lack of convention, the culture and the opportunities.

He never quite managed to shake his preference for cricket over baseball, but he developed a passion for American professional wrestling and football. He played
for the Corona Killa Bees, a youth football team, and became a big Dallas Cowboys fan.

After graduating from high school, Faqih enrolled at a local community college to earn a degree in computer information systems. To make money, he started
working part-time as a deliveryman at a cell phone store.

He rose through the ranks to become a salesman and started saving to open his own store. In January he and a cousin did just that, putting thousands of dollars into
Wireless Solutions, a small storefront on Columbus Avenue on Manhattan's Upper West Side. It was a proud moment. He thought he had arrived.

But there was a problem. In 1994, his mother had filed for political asylum for herself and her youngest son, who was 14 at the time. When no action was taken on
the application, the family said his parents took the advice of an attorney and resubmitted the paperwork, using different family names in hopes that they would get
another chance.

Before Sept. 11, families like the Faqihs had no trouble remaining in the U.S., even if they were ordered deported for such a move. But after that, the Justice
Department launched what it called the Absconder Apprehension Initiative, targeting those who had ignored deportation orders. The program first sought to track
down people from countries where terrorists operate, mostly Muslim nations. Faqih had "absconded" on an order issued without his knowledge in February 1996.

The family acknowledges its culpability. "Someone has to pay for it. We made a mistake," said one of Suleman's two older brothers, Shan, who is a legal resident.

But Shan and other relatives also feel as though the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 unfairly made them targets. "Being Muslim is like a sin in this country now," Shan
said.

For months, Faqih insisted on fighting his case, even though his lawyers told him he had no chance of winning. But his family was desperate to get him out of jail,
even if that meant him going back to Pakistan with his mother.

His sister, Sadaf, visited him in detention and would not stop crying until he finally relented.

In July, he was loaded onto a plane from Niagara Falls, N.Y., to Islamabad, passenger No. 54 on the fifth such flight to be filled with Pakistani deportees. Now he is
living with an older cousin, a math lecturer, in his family's modest but comfortable Karachi home.

There, relatives who had not seen him since he was a boy have put him in a new kind of confinement, making him stay off the streets as much as possible. They warn
him that because he lived in America, some people will assume he is rich and that makes him a potential target of kidnappers.

Faqih's mother, who also had a pending deportation order against her, was sent back to Pakistan a couple of weeks before him on a commercial flight with several
other families.

Back in Karachi, she is living separate from her son, with another branch of the family, and refuses to discuss her situation. But her children described her humiliation.
Her family had warned them against immigrating to America, thinking it was foolish for them to leave her husband's profitable business and start life over again. Now
she faces a chorus of I-told-you-sos.

Not only will it be difficult for her and her son to return to the U.S., the case of her husband, who remains in Queens for now, "pretty much looks hopeless as well,"
said David, the attorney, because he allegedly helped his wife file the fraudulent political asylum application.

Faqih is taking computer classes to keep up on the course work he began in New York. In August, he married his girlfriend, a U.S. citizen who flew from Queens to
Karachi for the ceremony, and they hope it will help his case. She has returned to the U.S.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)--and gaining steam in Congress--would grant legal status to the children of illegal immigrants who, like Faqih, were
brought to America, then committed no crimes and graduated from high school.

"Many of them view themselves as Americans and are loyal to our country," Hatch said of the bill last month. "They did not make the initial decision to enter the
United States illegally, and some may not even realize that they are here in violation of our immigration laws."

But the bill is too late for Faqih.

To Chicago and back

Naushad Ladhani opened the door to his family's abandoned Karachi apartment to find a solitary envelope waiting on the mat. It was the last gas bill, dated June
1998.

The gas had long since been cut off--after his father died and his mother left Pakistan for Chicago. So too had the electricity and the phone. The apartment was
coated in a thick layer of dust, the ceiling was leaking and puddles of water covered the floor.

A few days later, Ladhani recalled his bleak return to Karachi.

"My home is not here," he said, surveying the damp, peeling walls and motioning in the direction of America. "That's my home, over there."

Before he was arrested, Ladhani, 34, had spent the past 13 years driving taxis on Chicago's North Side.

He wasn't exactly the model immigrant.

He lied to get into the country. While here his bad temper flared occasionally, and at one point he was charged with possession of cocaine. But he did work hard,
and he became American in many ways, from his Chicago-inflected accent to his U.S.-born wife.

His mother, two brothers and sister all live in the U.S.; he has no relatives in Pakistan.

Growing up in the slums of Karachi, Ladhani had only one ambition in life: to get out. Anywhere would have done. As long as it took him away from the filth and
squalor of his crumbling neighborhood, from the beggars and the garbage and the flies, to a place that had jobs and a future--which are in short supply in Pakistan's
biggest and most violent city.

Because he had siblings already living in Chicago, he set his sights on joining them there.

So in 1986 at the age of 16, after being rejected six times for a visa at the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Ladhani decided he had no choice but to do what many an
immigrant before him had done: He cheated.

In Karachi, where there is a thriving black market in forged passports, that is not difficult. He obtained a fake passport that contained a visa for the U.S. and set off
for America.

He landed in Hawaii, where suspicious airport authorities detained him and sent him back, ordering him not to return for three years. In 1989 he tried again, and this
time, in New York, immigration officials failed to detect the forgery, waving him through.

The next day, Ladhani headed for Chicago. He enrolled in English classes and then, a year later, got a job driving cabs on the North Side. He obtained a Social
Security number in his real name--something that was relatively easy even for illegal immigrants in those days, when there was little coordination between immigration
authorities and other federal agencies--and started a new life.

In 1995 he met Donna Anderson, the woman who would become his wife, at his brother's discount store at 79th and Halsted Streets, across from the state public
aid office where she worked.

Anderson figured she was too independent to get married, and certainly not to this flirtatious guy who was 13 years her junior. But her co-workers nudged her to
give him a chance.

"I don't know, he's a real nice person. It just comes through his eyes--I mean, his goodness," she said recently, sitting in the living room of her childhood home in
Robbins. "So I said, `OK.' And we went out."

Two years later, they were married and lived together on the Far North Side. It wasn't bliss. Ladhani "has a temper," she said. But she also remembers how he
refused to leave her bedside when her severe asthma sent her to the hospital.

He also didn't pressure her to help him with his immigration status. It wasn't until August 2001--several years after their simple marriage ceremony at City Hall--that
Ladhani sought the green card he was entitled to apply for as the spouse of an American citizen.

He said he told immigration authorities the truth, that he had entered the country under a false name. But he didn't imagine that he would have a problem.

Even after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he knew the authorities were on the lookout for illegal Muslim immigrants, Ladhani did not expect to be affected.

"I thought they were looking for people with felonies, or any kind of money they owed," he said. "I paid my taxes. I had committed no crime. My wife was
American."

He still was waiting for his green card to come through when, in March, he was arrested at Dino's, a bar at the corner of Devon Avenue and Clark Street. A police
report from the incident alleges that an officer saw him drop a vial containing cocaine to the floor.

Ladhani was charged with possession of the drug--the charge later was dropped--and he appeared in court on March 27. After the hearing, as he and his wife
stepped into the hallway, two immigration officers stopped them.

"Are you Naushad Ladhani?" one agent asked.

"Yes," he replied.

Then they cuffed him, Donna Ladhani recalled, and an agent informed her, "We're taking him away."

She knew it was serious. It was the first time she ever had seen her husband so quiet.

Ladhani spent the next four months in detention, mostly at Tri-County Detention Center, a privately run jail at the southern tip of Illinois that houses illegal immigrants
awaiting deportation.

He was sent back to Pakistan on the July charter of deportees.

Back in Karachi, living in the dingy apartment, he's cut off from his American wife and family and friends in the States. His wife and one of Ladhani's brothers are
sending him money to help him until he can find a job.

When Ladhani calls his wife, using a public phone or one borrowed from a neighbor, he still pesters her about taking proper care of her asthma. "Donna, I can hear
that you're not breathing right," she said he'll ask her. "Did you take your medicine?"

They talk of her joining him in Pakistan, or maybe a third country if he can find a job and get resettled. He's fixing up the apartment in anticipation of a visit from her
this winter.

But they both know the chasm of distance and culture may doom their relationship.

Strolling through the garbage-strewn streets of his neighborhood, past women shrouded in black veils, donkey-drawn carts selling vegetables, the filthy monsoon
puddles and the swarms of flies, Ladhani shook his head.

"She can't adjust to life over here," he said. "She works, but women can't work over here. They stay inside and clean house. She smokes, she drinks. But women
can't smoke or drink over here."

Halfway around the globe, Donna Ladhani has similar doubts.

"I think about that now--every day," she said. "You think, `I'll go over there, and we'll be happy, we'll live happily ever after.'

"It's a dream. Reality doesn't work that way."

A family divided

Sitting in his cell in a small New Jersey county jail this summer, Mohammad Junaid faced a wrenching decision: The only way to salvage his family's slim hopes of
staying in America was for him to remain behind bars.

Junaid was supposed to be the 76th passenger on the July charter flight. He had narrowly missed being put on it because a Pakistani diplomat had alerted his wife
that she had 24 hours to spare him.

Panicked, she left message after message with Junaid's attorney, who got them in time and alerted immigration authorities that her husband had a pending appeal.
Sent to the county jail in New Jersey, Junaid faced an indefinite period behind bars while authorities considered his case. Detention was eating away at his patience
and pride.

He was ashamed that community groups and neighbors were supporting his family. He was desperate to hear the voice of his pregnant wife and 2-year-old daughter,
Ayesha, but sick that every collect phone call from detention took $20 out of their pockets.

But giving up his appeal, which was based on both political and humanitarian grounds, would mean immediate deportation. In Pakistan, he likely would find
inadequate medical treatment for his daughter, who needs leg braces to walk properly, and a hostile home for his wife, a native of Pakistan's bitter rival Bangladesh.

So desperate are the living conditions in his home country that Junaid's family raised money to send his mother from Karachi to deliver a simple message to him in the
Sussex County jail: Don't come home, there is no work for you there.

But Junaid told her he couldn't take it anymore.

"Even if I'm picking up garbage" in the streets of Karachi, "at least I can give them shelter," he said, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and plastic slippers during an
interview at the jail. "At least they will be in front of me."

Junaid had come to the U.S. on a temporary visa in 1994, two days after his 16th birthday. After a brief attempt at high school in Dallas, he found work, first in
Texas and then in New York, where he fell in love with and then married the cashier across the counter of a Dunkin' Donuts: Nishat Islam.

All along, Junaid and Islam knew they were trying to beat the clock. Like millions of other illegal immigrants, they hoped that if they worked hard and didn't make
trouble, they eventually would be eligible to apply for green cards.

Then Junaid heard about the call for men from predominantly Muslim countries to register with the federal government. The Justice Department had instituted the
registration in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and many Muslim community leaders had urged families to comply, noting it was their legal duty.

Junaid's first visit to Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan was uneventful; he was told to come back for another interview on May 19.

But on his return visit, an immigration judge gave him some bad news: He had been ordered deported, in absentia, in 1997, so he would have to be detained.

Junaid maintains that he knew nothing of the deportation hearing held in his absence six years ago, let alone the order deporting him. In July, an immigration judge
denied Junaid's motion to reopen his case, noting that an immigration officer had personally served him with an order to appear for the deportation hearing.

But records also show that the agent read the order to Junaid in English, and he says his English at the time was so poor that he did not understand what the agent
was telling him.

From jail this summer, Junaid filed for political asylum, based on being attacked as a teenager by political activists in Pakistan. He also sought parole on humanitarian
grounds, given his pregnant wife and ailing daughter.

By mid-September, with little progress on either front, he lost the will to fight his case, making his return to Pakistan inevitable. A few days later, in another collect
call from jail, he found out he was a father again.

His wife had given birth to a boy: Rasha Junaid was 7 pounds, 10 ounces and a U.S. citizen. He got his first look at his son through a thick slab of plexiglass at the
federal detention center in Elizabeth, N.J.

On Oct. 11, Junaid was deported. He is staying with his parents in Karachi, where they live in a modest house. He has no work.

Islam has found another doughnut-shop job, though the $6.50-an-hour wage isn't enough to support two children.

"I don't know how I'm going to stay with no husband, but the situation makes me do that," she said. "If I keep Rasha, I couldn't work. I couldn't manage rent, bills,
food, clothes."

So, once her infant son is weaned, he will be sent on a plane as well to live with his father in Pakistan.