As part of the agreement to get out from under Donald Trump’s travel ban, Iraq agreed to accept deportees from the United States. To fulfill its end of the bargain, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained over 100 Iraqi nationals in Michigan and northern Ohio in the last month. Among them are a number of Christians who fear that going back to Iraq will mean almost certain death at the hands of ISIS.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the detainees last weekend. On Thursday, a federal judge issued a stay on the deportation.
ICE, through the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan told federal judge Mark Goldsmith that the proper venue for the case was immigration court. However, the ACLU contended that the detainees could potentially be hustled out of the country before they even get their day in court. Goldsmith, an Obama appointee, sided with the ACLU, and issued a stay in order to give him time to consider the complex legal issues raised in this case.
Read Goldsmith’s order here. He hrew a major bone to the ACLU when he largely upheld the detainees’ claim that they could suffer “irreparable harm in the form of persecution, torture, or death” if they are deported before they have a chance to argue their case. He found that the detainees faced a “significant chance of loss of life and lesser forms of persecution”–enough that it more than outweighed any government interest in deporting them right away. For that reason, he felt that a stay was necessary to determine whether he even had jurisdiction.
Needless to say, the ACLU was overjoyed.
“The court took a life-saving action by blocking our clients from being immediately sent back to Iraq.” -Lee Gelernt @ACLU
— ACLU of Michigan (@ACLUofMichigan) June 23, 2017
So were the detainees and their families. Shoki Kanja, whose brother, Najah, was caught in the ICE sweep, spoke for many of those relatives when he told CNN that “our hopes are getting in the right direction.
Najah’s story is typical of many of the detainees. He came to this country 40 years ago. While he spent time in prison after getting mixed up in drug activity, he has turned his life around since getting out. While he lost a chance at getting a green card due to his conviction, he now owns a tobacco shop in the Detroit area and is engaged. He checked in with ICE regularly and has stayed out of trouble. However, he was rousted out of bed on June 11 and hustled to a detention center in Youngstown, where he was told he was being deported to Iraq. Never mind that he doesn’t speak a word of Arabic, and nearly all of his family is in the United States.
The Kanjas are Chaldeans, a community that has faced severe persecution in Iraq. Many of them fled to Detroit during the Baathist era, and several thousand more have come to flee the scourge of what became ISIS. Some 150,000 Chaldeans live in the Detroit area today.
Many of them, and those who stand with them, find this move particularly hard to understand. Trump loudly condemned a number of Middle Eastern countries for being hostile to Christians, and has publicly vowed to help Christians in that region. Even before then, the Obama administration declared that ISIS was waging genocide against Christians in its path. The ACLU contended that sending people to a country where they face certain persecution, and even death, breaches every standard of decency that is known, in addition to American and international law.
It’s interesting to note the ACLU’s prominent role in fighting for these Iraqis. After all, for the better part of four decades, what passes for leadership on the religious right usually spits on the ground at the very mention of the ACLU’s name. But in this fight, the ACLU finds itself allied with one of its longtime foes, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. That group’s president, Russell Moore, told NPR that many Christians and Catholics are concerned that the Chaldeans face what amounts to “a death sentence” if they are sent back to Iraq.
I was first alerted to this story last weekend by my girlfriend, who has long been passionate about persecuted Christians. She was surprised at the deafening silence from one group that has also been active in speaking up for the persecuted church–the American Center for Law and Justice. While most of us know the ACLJ as one of the most notorious Christianist law firms, it has been very active in fighting for persecuted Christians around the world.
To its credit, the ACLJ and its European partners recently went to the UN to argue on behalf of Christians facing genocide in the Muslim world, particularly at the hands of ISIS. But there hasn’t been a word about the ordeal their brothers and sisters here in the States may face if they are deported to Iraq.
Rather, it seems that the ACLJ has other priorities. For instance, it railed against James Comey’s decision to leak the memo of his discussions with Trump.
Fired FBI Director #Comey said as a "private citizen" he felt "free to share it." But he was NOT a private citizen when he created the memo. pic.twitter.com/xTVNBz8JUB
— ACLJ (@ACLJ) June 18, 2017
And it has also been beating the drum in support of the Senate Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare.
We've been fed so many lies about #ObamaCare & #PlannedParenthood. Enough is enough. Sign & RT to take action now: https://t.co/wG0vmcnAts pic.twitter.com/EiUUT3cn04
— ACLJ (@ACLJ) June 23, 2017
But not one word about Christians who could potentially be sent right into the jaws of ISIS if they are deported. Granted, ACLJ executive director Jay Sekulow is now part of Trump’s outside legal team. But surely he has the guts to do the right thing.
One can hope Sekulow follows Moore’s example and puts partisanship aside to protect people from being sent into a meat-grinder. Or has he, like his boss, Pat Robertson, become a water-carrier for Trump?
(featured image courtesy Nadine Kalaho via GoFundMe)
