ICE Deports Immigrant Father Who Sued Agents For Assault
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported an immigrant detainee to his native Uzbekistan on Tuesday, just three days after he filed a lawsuit alleging that three ICE agents beat him and shocked him with a stun gun during a previous removal attempt.
Bakhodir Madjitov, 39, who was able to avoid deportation twice in the past, was denied a temporary restraining order Monday afternoon. He was forced to board a plane from Louisiana that night.
Madjitov, a caregiver who works with elderly people, wasn’t able to say goodbye to his family in person. He has never met his youngest son, who was born a week after ICE detained Madjitov in 2017. He won’t get the chance to appear in court for his civil rights suit against the U.S. government and ICE agents, which was filed on Friday in the Eastern District of New York.
Now Madjitov is headed back to Uzbekistan, where he fears he will be persecuted over his Muslim faith and family ties.
“Bakhodir should be with his family and holding his youngest son in his arms in America,” said Ahmed Mohamed, legal director at the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which worked on Madjitov’s case along with the New Haven Legal Assistance Immigrant Rights Clinic.
“Instead, he is being deported thousands of miles away from his wife and kids,” Mohamed said. “No family should be tortured in this way.”
ICE confirmed to HuffPost that Madjitov was removed on Tuesday.
“Madjitov received extensive legal due process before the U.S. courts, to include numerous appeals, and he was removed after the courts repeatedly found him to have no lawful basis to remain,” said Bryan D. Cox, the Southern Region’s public affairs director.
Immigrants who allege abusive behavior by the U.S. government have the odds stacked against them. Their rights are limited, as is their access to outside help. And they can risk being deported before they are able to achieve justice. Madjitov’s lawyers tried to...
