'This is home': Syed Jamal reflects on his arrest by ICE, sudden fame, visa mistakes
Last month on his deportation flight over the Pacific Ocean, Syed A. Jamal of Lawrence learned of his fame.
“We saw you on CNN,” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent said when Jamal deplaned as the jet refueled in Hawaii, en route to Jamal’s native Bangladesh.
Others detained with Jamal told the 55-year-old chemist: “Heard about you on the radio.”
It wasn’t Jamal who spoke to CNN or any other news outlet. He was three weeks into detention and just hours away from leaving U.S. airspace. Yet his neighbors and family back home had ignited a campaign that brought him off that jet and returned him to the Kansas City area, where a federal judge on Tuesday ordered Jamal’s release from jail pending a review of his deportation case.
Jamal on Wednesday spoke at length with The Star at a neighbor’s celebration of his return.
He recalled that painful flight, listening on headphones to pop music he loved from the late 1980s. That’s when he came legally to America on a student visa.
“I realized this was the same music I listened to coming to the U.S. 30 years ago,” he said. Now he was wondering when he’d next see his wife Angela and their three U.S.-born children.
“You think about family, friends, community, the little one,” meaning his son Fareed, who’s in first grade, said Jamal. “Memories, events."
He recalled his own mistakes dating back to 2006, when he tried switching from a work visa at Children’s Mercy Hospital, where his research work was discontinued, to seeking a student visa in pursuit of a doctorate at the University of Kansas.
“I wish I could call myself an expert” on immigration laws, he said.
But Jamal waited too long between visas, he said, creating what he called “a gap” in his status that proved “a critical point” in deportation proceedings that commenced in 2011.
Immigration officials allowed Jamal to stay on the condition that he would report regularly to ICE, which he did up to the week he was arrested in the driveway of his home, preparing to drive his daughter to school.
Being out of status for just a few months “can be held against you forever,” he said.
The neighbors hosting Wednesday’s celebration, Marci and Carl Leuschen, cut short a trip to Colorado and drove back to Kansas upon learning of Jamal’s release from jail. Dozens attended the gathering.
“In a world where there’s a lot of ugly, this gives me hope,” Marci Leuschen said. “If you speak up for what you believe, good things can happen."
Though freed from detention, Jamal still faces an uphill fight to stay in the U.S. The Board of Immigration Appeals — an administrative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — is reviewing his case and will likely issue the final judgment. It could take several weeks or months.
If the board re-opens his case, it would give hope to other "non-criminal visitors" who have final orders of removal like Jamal, said his younger brother, Syed H. Jamal.
“We’re lucky this occurred in a small town where there’s a community of friends who have the resources to mobilize. So many others (being deported) don’t have that network,” said Syed H. Jamal. “People everywhere are paying attention to the fact that this is happening to their neighbors, not just strangers.”
In the weeks since Syed A. Jamal's arrest on Jan, 24, during which ICE transferred him five times, his friends and family in Lawrence held a letter-writing campaign and a rally. Online, a Change.org petition calling for a stay of his deportation quickly drew tens of thousands of signatures and a GoFundMe site raised more than $75,000 to cover Jamal’s legal fees. National news outlets wrote about his plight, which even caught the attention of actress Alyssa Milano.
Alan Anderson, a Lawrence lawyer whose children know the Jamal kids, convinced his Polsinelli law firm in Kansas City to provide pro-bono help to the family. Jamal's lead attorney, Rekha Sharma-Crawford from a separate law office, is among the most sought-after immigration lawyers in the region.
For all the support, many have been puzzled by how Jamal, a Bihari ethnic minority, had not gained citizenship since coming to the U.S. in 1987. Five of his siblings living in North America had obtained that status.
In 2008, a citizen brother in Texas filed a “siblings petition,” one way Jamal could pursue a path to citizenship. But even when a close relative sponsors a non-citizen, the wait can take 15 to 20 years.
Before his time ran out, Jamal also filed a separate petition seeking permanent residency based on his contributions to education and community. The government rejected his request, which generally is granted only to esteemed achievers and star athletes born outside America.
In 2012, Jamal chose not to return to Bangladesh under an immigration judge’s order of removal. He gambled that Canada might accept him and his family, according to arguments Tuesday in federal court. But Canada said no to his application for residency.
Even then, Jamal felt he could continue working and raising his family in Kansas so long as he complied with supervision orders, he said Wednesday.
In Washington, Kansas Republican U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins and Missouri Democrat U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver are working on legislation that would protect Jamal and his wife, who is also Bangladeshi, from deportation.
As supporters gathered for pizza and drinks on Wednesday, Jamal voiced gratitude for all the support.
“To me, this is home,” he said of Kansas and Missouri. “Home sweet home."
He declined to discuss politics or to predict the outcome of his ongoing fight against deportation. But he said he looked forward to resuming his scientific research — which includes two papers he would like to see published — and, he hopes, to living out his years as a lawful resident of Lawrence.
“I’ve always been an optimist,” he said.
This story was originally published March 21, 2018 at 11:05 PM with the headline "'This is home': Syed Jamal reflects on his arrest by ICE, sudden fame, visa mistakes."