Jailed for months with case pending, Pakistani gives up

By Flynn McRoberts
Tribune staff reporter

CHARLOTTE -- Few people appreciate the new realities of homeland security more than the employees of Worldwide Flight Services. Preparing cargo loads for airlines flying out of the international airport here, they are on the front line of the nation's efforts to prevent another terrorist attack.

But they never imagined that effort would sweep up their friend and former colleague, Raja Saleem.

Jane Hefner, a trainer at Worldwide, shook her head when told recently that Saleem had been deported to his homeland of Pakistan.

"I hate that," Hefner said in her soft Southern drawl. "I truly believe that boy wouldn't have done anything."

To Hefner and Saleem's other co-workers at Worldwide, he was a gentleman and a hard worker, an employee so expert at their computer system that he taught his
superiors a thing or two.

"I wish there was something we could do to help him," Hefner said. "It makes me sick to even hear it. . . . I would hate to go to another country and be treated the
way he was treated here."

Saleem, 30, was arrested before the government started requiring men from predominantly Muslim countries to register as part of a sweeping immigration
crackdown. But his experience with the authorities--he was deported even though he sought to follow the letter of immigration law--underscores the new climate for
men like him.

Pounding at the door

Saleem wasn't alarmed when the pounding started on his apartment door at 4 a.m. Oct. 17.

He had made friends with a police officer who lived next to him in their Gastonia, N.C., complex, where Saleem stood out as one of the few Pakistanis in a
community of mostly whites and blacks. And he assumed it was his friend, coming over for one of their late-night chats.

Saleem opened the door. It was a handful of federal agents.

"Where is Mr. Amir?" one of them demanded, according to Saleem. "Where is Mr. Amir?"

Saleem was perplexed. "I don't know a Mr. Amir," he told them. "Who is Mr. Amir?"

The agents persisted, he said. "Who is Mr. Amir?" Finally they asked, "What's your name?"

"I'm Saleem," he replied.

"We want you too," he recalled an agent telling him.

Saleem, who drove a taxi after getting laid off from his air cargo job, said he had experienced no immigration problems until about two months before agents raided
his home.

His work permit was due to expire in a few weeks, so he went to get it renewed.

Sitting down across from a pleasant Charlotte immigration office employee, he said he explained that his work permit was about to expire. She took his information
and told him not to worry; his new permit would arrive within a few weeks.

It did not. Saleem returned several times, but the new permit never came. His last visit was in mid-October 2002, he recalled. Two days after that, the pounding
sounded on his apartment door.

For weeks after his arrest, he said, he had no idea why he had been detained. Then, on Dec. 1, he was taken to Atlanta for an appearance before an immigration
judge. Saleem recalls hearing the prosecutor tell the judge: "He's involved in the paper marriage cases."

At the time, U.S. Atty. Strom Thurmond Jr. of South Carolina was overseeing what his office dubbed "Operation Broken Vows," a sweeping criminal investigation
of U.S. citizens paid to marry immigrants looking to get green cards.

Records show that a man authorities incorrectly believed lived in Saleem's apartment was a primary target of the probe. Saleem never was charged in the
investigation, but he still had to deal with questions about his immigration status.

'Send me back'

In court, Saleem assured the judge that his marriage was legitimate and offered to bring his wife to court to prove it. They were estranged at the time of his arrest;
she had moved back in with family in her hometown of Kenosha, Wis., which looked suspicious to the agents.

According to the report on Saleem's arrest, the agents also were suspicious because they found the work permit in his wallet to be expired--the same permit he had
sought to renew for weeks before his arrest.

At his hearing, Saleem said, the judge took him aside several times and assured him that he could challenge the government's case.

Though he had overstayed his original visitor's visa, Saleem had a pending green-card application submitted by his wife--a fact that gave him a case for contesting his
deportation.

But by then, he had spent six weeks in the Mecklenburg County Jail in Charlotte, doing his best to stay clear of the men he had been thrown in with, including violent
offenders and others already convicted.

When the prosecutor refused to consider bond, Saleem despaired. He didn't want to stay in jail for an indefinite period, perhaps years, while fighting his case.

"Send me back," he recalled telling the judge.

In March, after nearly five months in detention, Saleem was put on one of the charter flights to Pakistan arranged by U.S. immigration authorities since the Sept. 11
attacks.

When he arrived at the Islamabad airport, he called his parents from a pay phone. It was the first time in five months they'd heard from their oldest child.

While he has fond memories of his co-workers at Worldwide as well as his taxi customers, Saleem is convinced the U.S. government is targeting one thing: followers
of Islam.

"They were catching Muslims and sending them back," he said as he sat in his brother's apartment near the Islamabad airport, his voice filled with resignation, not
anger.

"When I was in the U.S., it was like a dream," he said. "When they sent me back, my dream was over."

Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune