Friday, Sep 5, 2008
Batool, Hadeel and Asmaa Kesbeh
For a few months, nothing happened. Then the Kesbehs suffered a smaller tragedy, one that may have intersected with the larger one to end their lives in America.
"On March 2, 2002, we received a phone call that made my wife almost die," says Sharif. There had been an accident on Jordan's Dead Sea Highway. Asmaa's mother, father, younger sister and 3-year-old nephew were killed.
People throughout their community heard what had happened and gathered to offer condolences. The Kesbehs are convinced that this huge gathering of local Arabs and Muslims brought them to the FBI's attention.
The raid happened four weeks later. Before sunrise on March 29, eight officers brandishing guns and flashlights barged into the house. At first, Asmaa thought they were robbers. They burst into the kids' rooms, and when Noor asked if she could put on her head scarf before going with them, one officer sniggered, "Make sure you bring your Quran with you when you're deported."
As Asmaa sat terrified in the living room, one of the agents demanded to know why so many Muslims were coming to her house. She says he asked her: "Are you preparing for another attack?"
In the end, the agents left Noor at home to look after Afnan and Batool. Sharif and the rest of the family were driven to the immigration office in separate vans. Once there, they were all fingerprinted. Muhannad, Asmaa and her daughters were released on probation, pending deportation. Sharif and Alaa were put in jail.
Hysterical, Asmaa demanded to know why they were locking up her son, an 18-year-old who could hardly be blamed for his parents' immigration violations. "He's an innocent son, he never violated any laws," she cried.
According to Asmaa, the immigration officer responded, "The people who destroyed the Trade Center, all of them were his age." This, of course, wasn't true. "They came from Saudi Arabia like your son," the man continued. "He's Arab, Muslim, and illegal."
At home, a desperate Noor, wracking her brain for someone who could save them, thought of Marvin Zindler, the consumer investigator on Houston's Channel 13 news. "He's always helping people," she says. "He's always exposing restaurants that have roaches." She called him, and he came and did a segment on the Kesbehs' plight.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee saw the family on TV, and a week later, she made a public statement praising them as the embodiment of America's values. Soon, there were stories in the Houston Chronicle about the "Palestinian Cleavers" and reports on Amy Goodman's radio show "Democracy Now." Lee introduced a resolution in Congress that would have granted the family legal residency.
Meanwhile, Sharif and Alaa languished behind bars.
Today, sitting on a floor cushion in his Amman living room after Asmaa served a lunch of stuffed grape leaves, squash and salad, the voice of the Kesbeh patriarch chokes and his eyes tear as he talks about being locked up with his eldest son. "He's a boy," says Sharif, fingers clicking a string of black worry beads. "He just turned 18 years old when they arrested him. He was a kid. I had to wake up him when they offered breakfast at 5 in the morning. He was patient. He was patient, but sometimes he asked, 'Dad, why are they holding us?'"
They slept in a dorm with about 45 people, most of them also held on immigration violations. Nearly half their roommates were Arab or Muslim. "It was so miserable to see this tremendous number of people, Arab and Muslim, who have lives, who are productive, being deported, separated from their wives and children in this uncivilized way in the most advanced and civilized country in the world," Sharif says. "The people they used to bring, when they locked the door, they'd collapse crying."
After six months, though, the Kesbehs still hadn't been deported, and things began to look up. Under pressure from New Jersey's Arab community, Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli agreed to introduce a companion bill to Jackson Lee's in the Senate, and Sen. Edward Kennedy intervened with immigration to have Sharif and Alaa released while the legislation was pending. The family's deportation was stayed for six more months.
Asmaa was in the hospital waiting to go into surgery for a hernia when Noor told her that their bill had found a sponsor in the Senate, and that they might be able to stay. She fell to the floor, thanking God and crying with happiness and relief.
But Torricelli, in the midst of an ethics scandal, withdrew from the Senate race at the end of September. After that, the Kesbehs were unable to find another champion in the chamber.
The publicity their case had generated began to backfire, with the right seizing on their story as an example of Democratic squishiness on illegal immigration. Michelle Malkin, the caustic conservative author of the book "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores," wrote a syndicated column called "Lawmakers Who Love Lawbreakers," which excoriated those politicians who'd risen to the Kesbehs' defense. Senators that initially had seemed sympathetic backed away.
By the time their stay of deportation expired in March, the family had exhausted all their options.
On March 27, Asmaa stayed up all night trying to decide what to take and what to leave. They were allowed only about 44 pounds each of luggage, meaning most of what they owned would have to stay behind. That night there was a candlelight vigil at a local church, which offered to shelter the family against federal agents. Supporters camped out on their front lawn holding signs and banners. One said, "America Was Built by Immigrants. Stop Deporting Them." Another read, "Houston Loves the Kesbeh Family." In pictures taken that night, Noor is wearing an American flag hijab. Someone asked Sharif how he felt. He said it was the worst day of his life.
Early on the morning of March 28, 2003, a year after the pre-dawn raid on their house, the Kesbehs prepared to surrender themselves to the Houston immigration office. They were told to be there by 7 a.m.
Alaa, though, was gone. Late the previous night, his friends had called. "Stay with us," they said. "We'll find a way for you to go to Canada." He went to his friend's house and turned off his cellphone. He became a fugitive.
At the immigration office, the rest of the family was locked inside a bus that took them to the airport. While they waited for their flight, a man sat next to Noor. "So what do you think of Bush?" he asked her. Then he asked her religion, and when she said Muslim, he asked, "So what do you think of Saddam? What do you think about the war in Iraq?"
"I told him I don't really care. I have my own problems," she says.
The man rose and began whispering to an immigration agent. "We were shocked," says Hadeel, "because we thought he was waiting for his plane."
Even when the family had to board the plane that would take them first to Amsterdam and then to Jordan, they still expected to be saved. "My husband was waiting for them to say, 'Kesbeh family, you are legal, come back,' like in an American movie," says Asmaa.
But the plane took them, as planned, to Jordan. Sharif and Asmaa hadn't lived there for 22 years. The kids hadn't lived there ever.
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