PRESS DIGEST
INS draws fire for deporting Ethiopian man
Anchorage Daily News
January 23, 1998
Except for a bounced check, Workneh Abegaz might not be on a flight back to Ethiopia. The slender, soft-spoken 57-year-old with graying hair and beard might still be in Anchorage working as a janitor at a downtown hostel. He might even have been granted the political asylum he was seeking.
Instead, after nine years in the United States and two confusing weeks behind bars at the Sixth Avenue Correctional Center, Abegaz was sent back on January 21 to the country where he fears he will be killed, tortured, or like some of his relatives, simply disappear.
His story has outraged friends and local immigration lawyers, who say they can’t believe Abegaz was expelled over a $110 fee to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service he could have paid had he known the check didn’t clear. They say the case is one more example of over-zealousness on the part of INS officials to reduce the number of immigrants in the country, even at the expense of due process rights.
To put someone’s life at risk rather than allow them to make good on the check ‘’is beyond belief,’’ said Jim Glaze, an Anchorage lawyer who chairs the immigration section of the Alaska Bar Association.
Several high-profile cases in the past year have raised questions about the country’s immigration policies, including that of a Chinese woman who was strip-searched and later deported after entering Alaska on a business visa. The woman was later found to have a valid visa.
Most of the complaints have focused on laws passed in 1996 that reduced the number of appeals available to immigrants, Glaze said. Abegaz’s case is different, but part of the same picture, he said.
Immigration officials defend Abegaz’s deportation. They noted that his request for political asylum was denied by a judge who didn’t believe his claims that he would be persecuted. The $110 check that bounced was to pay for an appeal of that decision.
It was Abegaz’s responsibility to make sure the check cleared, said Rick Kenney, a spokesman for the Board of Immigration Appeals in Virginia. Because it didn’t, his appeal was denied.
Even if it had, he still might have lost the appeal and been deported, said Peter Gordon, INS’s district deputy director in Anchorage.
But Abegaz’s attorney, Jill Jensen, said the point is that he never got the chance to have his appeal heard.
In an interview at the Sixth Avenue jail shortly before he was deported, Abegaz said his check bounced because he moved from California to Alaska and closed his bank account not realizing the check was outstanding. Instead, he didn’t find out until seven months later and by then, he had been scheduled for deportation.
Abegaz said he left Ethiopia in 1988 to attend a one-year management training program in California. He wanted to escape the turmoil in his country, he said.
The country’s communist regime, for which he worked in the Ministry of Education, was under attack by two rebel groups. The government was toppled in 1991. Since then, hundreds of former government officials have been imprisoned and other people have disappeared, according to news reports.
Abegaz said he fears retribution from those now in power. He spent two years at Golden Gate University in San Francisco working toward a master’s degree in management, but financial problems forced him to quit, and he took a job cleaning rooms at a hotel. In 1991, he applied for political asylum. That request was finally heard in April 1997 and denied.
In May, Abegaz appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va. He sent the check with his appeal. Shortly after that, he moved to Alaska. He thought the agency had cashed the check. So did Jensen. She even received a receipt from the board acknowledging the appeal had been filed, she said. She assumed the case was being considered.
But in December, she received a letter from the board that the check had bounced and that Abegaz was scheduled for deportation. Two weeks later, immigration agents came to the Anchorage International AYH hostel downtown to arrest him. Abegaz lived at the hostel, doing odd jobs to pay for his room and board. Eventually he was hired as a janitor.
Employees loved him, said Pat McGee, president of the hostel’s board of directors. Rachel Alinsunurin, who works at the hostel, said he was the best janitor ever. “He was just so conscientious. He paid a lot more attention to details. He would pick up all the little stuff, dust. He just did a lot more than the normal cleaning.”
After the December notice, Jensen filed appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals asking them to stay his deportation and explaining what had happened with the check.
On January 21, the board denied those appeals. Jensen said she was told that rules were rules and that his appeal was incomplete because the check had bounced.
“Basically they said tough luck,” she said. “It’s reprehensible.” Jensen said she was researching her options, but there appeared to be little she could do for Abegaz. For now, she doesn’t even have a way to contact him. McGee, who found out on January 22 that Abegaz had been deported, said she was shocked. Many of his belongings were still at the hostel, she said.
“He was just this little man, kind of reminds you of Mahatma Gandhi,’’ she said. ‘’He was just wonderful and so helpful. I can’t believe it.”
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