Finding It Easier to To Be Cruel Than Taking the Risk of Being Kind

Here is another immigration horror story from our own backyard that demonstrates the inhumanity of the current system:

Father’s final days filled with deportation fears
Sunday, August 22, 2010, By Dean Narciso, The Columbus Dispatch

The Jaars family, shown praying at a 2005 vigil held on their behalf, still is battling deportation. They are, from left, daughter Roslee, son Grant and parents Abraham and Delecia.

A North Side family, fighting for years to remain in the United States, now faces a larger battle.

Abraham Jaars, who left South Africa 24 years ago with his young family amid a fractious apartheid regime, has cancer and precious time left.

Yet efforts to deport him, his wife, and their son and daughter persist, despite a judge’s recommendation five years ago that the matter be settled.

“The Jaars(es) are productive members of our society who have come to know this country as their home,” wrote U.S. District Judge R. Guy Cole.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a previous denial of asylum, and Cole agreed with the technical legal reasons for that decision. But he said “this result appears pointless and unjust.”

Abraham, 68, his wife, Delecia, and grown children Roslee and Grant have had nothing more than a traffic ticket since they left South Africa in 1986 on six-month visitor visas. They own a house and cars, paid their taxes and are active in their church, said Ryan Mowry, a friend of the family’s.

Cole had encouraged federal immigration officials to, “at a minimum, consider indefinitely deferring enforcement,” according to court records.

But that hasn’t happened, said the family’s attorney, Dennis Muchnicki.

“They have been fighting it tooth and nail,” he said of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “and never attempted to resolve the matter.”

The family members have said they inadvertently overstayed their visas by two years but sought asylum based on persecution under apartheid. Mr. and Mrs. Jaars are multiracial.

Five years ago, Rob Baker, former field-office director for detention and removal operations in the Detroit office of ICE, delayed deportation by one year but promised nothing more.

“I can't have personal feelings about these cases, about whether they’re being wronged or not,” Baker said then . “I really have to use the law and follow it to the best of my ability.”

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