Iraqi Christians Know That Deportation Means Death At The Hands Of ISIS (VIDEO)


In case you missed it, when Donald Trump signed a revised version of his travel ban in March, he removed Iraq from the list of affected countries. Trump changed his mind after Baghdad assured him that it had adequate vetting measures in place to keep suspected terrorists from reaching our shores.


Well, it turns out that Iraq made another promise to Trump in order to get off the list–it agreed to accept deportees from the United States. In the last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained over 100 Iraqi nationals living in Michigan and northern Ohio and slated them for deportation to Iraq in order to fulfill part of the bargain. Among them are a number of Christians who fear that Trump is effectively sentencing them to death if they go home. They got a reprieve on Thursday when the Michigan ACLU filed a class-action suit against ICE.

ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said that most of the deportees have “very serious felony convictions, multiple convictions in many cases.” The ACLU acknowledges this, but notes that most of the detainees have fully complied with ICE supervision conditions. In many cases, the charges at issue are decades old, and the detainees have had no further trouble with the law.

For example, Ali Al-Dilaimi was slated for deportation on the basis of an arrest for assault in 2001. He served five months of a one-year sentence, and his record was expunged. No matter–he was arrested and hauled to a detention center in Youngstown. His wife, Brianna, an American citizen, told CNN that if her husband is deported, she and their two sons are prepared to move to Iraq rather than allow their family to be torn apart.

The ACLU also noted that many of the detainees are Chaldean Christians, a community that has historically been the target of severe persecution in Iraq. They fled Iraq in droves during the Baathist era. Many of them settled in the Detroit area, where 150,000 Chaldeans live today. Some 30,000 Chaldeans have settled in Detroit in the last decade, many of whom fled the scourge of what became ISIS.

For the Chaldeans slated for deportation, the prospect of being sent back to Iraq is particularly hard to understand. Trump condemned a number of Middle Eastern countries for being hostile to Christians, and even before then the Obama administration accused ISIS of waging genocide against Christians. Kary Moss, the executive director of the ACLU of Michigan, said that sending people to a country where they are likely to be “violently persecuted” or even killed is not only “immoral,” but runs counter to American and international law. She argues that the detainees have a right to make the case that they could face torture and death if they are sent back to Iraq.


Steve Oshana of A Demand for Action, which advocates for religious minorities in the Middle East, was also up in arms. He appeared on EWTN on Monday to plead his community’s case. Watch here.

Oshana claimed that many of the detainees haven’t committed any crimes at all, and others served their sentences more than 25 years ago, “when Iraq was a different place.” He described the mass deportations as “a lack of mercy,” especially considering that the government has officially acknowledged that the Chaldean community is being persecuted.

Wisam Naoum, a local lawyer, accused ICE of deliberately scheduling raids while families were on their way to church–a move that he called “a deliberate attack” on Detroit’s Chaldean community.

In many cases, these detainees face being booted out of the only home they know. One of them is Najah Konja, a Chaldean who fled to the United States 40 years ago with his brother, Shoki, and settled in the Detroit area. Shoki told CNN that his brother got mixed up in drugs, and served 20 years in prison on drug conspiracy charges. He turned his life around after getting out, and owns a tobacco shop.

But none of that mattered on Sunday. That morning, he was rousted out of bed and hauled to the Youngstown detention center, where he was told that he was being sent back to Iraq–even though he doesn’t speak a word of Arabic and most of his family is here in the United States.

For Shoki, his brother’s arrest came as a particularly rude shock. He voted for Trump in November, and fully supported Trump’s plans to ramp up deportations of immigrants. However, he believed that was going to sweep up “hard-core criminals,” not people who “turned their life around” as his brother had.

Perhaps Shoki ought to have a word with one of Trump’s most prominent supporters, Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. While the ACLJ is best known as a hard-core Christianist legal group, one of its few redeeming qualities is that it is very active in fighting for persecuted Christians around the world. This past week, for instance, the ACLJ and its European affiliate spoke up on behalf of Christians facing persecution in Pakistan.

But so far, there hasn’t been a word about the ordeal these Chaldeans are facing. My girlfriend has long been passionate about the persecuted church, and first alerted me to this story. She wondered why the ACLJ hasn’t joined forces with the ACLU on this issue.


I can only agree. You have religious minorities who face being sent to almost certain death if their deportation orders are allowed to stand. It’s time to right this wrong–and as many people on both sides of the aisle need to stand up for them as possible. A number of them can’t afford legal assistance; donate to this GoFundMe campaign to help them get it.

(featured image courtesy Nadine Kalaho via GoFundMe)

 

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.