Public Counsel - Pro Bono Online

Daily Journal- May 30, 2003

Jurist Releases Iranian Activist -- Man Was Held in Immigration Jail For Five Months -- Immigration Judge Frees Peace Activist

By Susan McRae

Daily Journal Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - After five months in an immigration jail, an Iranian peace activist finally has been released as his lawyer continues to question why he was imprisoned in the first place.

Alireza Ghazi Zahedi reported to the government's post-Sept. 11 alien registration program, targeting suspect nationalities, including Iranians, in December, and was held in an immigration detention facility until last week.

Authorities suggested Zahedi's status was improper because his attempts to immigrate through his wife, a U.S. citizen, were still pending. Homeland Security officials apparently also questioned whether his marriage was a fraud.

After Lancaster Immigration Judge Michael Kilroy determined that Zahedi's marriage was valid, Zahedia got out in time to spend Memorial Day weekend with his wife, Azima Sharrieff.

" I am so happy," an exuberant Zahedi, 26, said in a phone interview from his San Bernardino home. He said that the first thing he did after his release was kiss his wife.

" I never was in custody before," Zahedi said. "I was shocked to sit in jail for five months for nothing."
Niels Frenzen, professor of immigration law, said Zahedi's detention diverted resources from the real task of catching terrorists and criminals.

" There's nothing wrong with the Department of Homeland Security being on heightened alert and scrutinizing some people more than others," said Frenzen, who took on Zahedi's case with help from his students at the USC's immigration law clinic after reading about it in the Daily Journal.

" But it's a tremendous waste of resources and not helping national security when the Department of Homeland Security makes decisions to blindly detain people because of nationality status," Frenzen said.
" I'd wager that if Alireza was from Canada, Finland or Sweden, with exactly the same set of facts, the Department of Homeland Security would have ignored him," Frenzen said.

Homeland Security officials would not comment on Zahedi's case specifically.

However, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversaw the special call-in registration program, acknowledged there was a lot of confusion when the program began, especially in the Los Angeles area, where hundreds of Iranians were detained for days and weeks.

To correct the problems, the agency added more personnel, computers and cameras and, most important, improved guidelines from the Justice Department to help workers implement the program, bureau spokesman Francisco Arcaute said.

" Starting in January, officials only detained individuals who truly needed to be detained," Arcaute said. "If someone was close to obtaining immigration benefits, such as a pending citizenship application or work permit, they were unlikely to be detained, even if technically they were out of status."

While people from the Middle East are not being arrested in the same numbers as they were last year, Frenzen said that he still hears cases of people being detained in situations that before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would have been ignored.

The special call-in registration for certain Middle Eastern Muslim men from countries considered hostile to the United States ended April 25 at local immigration offices but is still enforced at ports of entry. Arcaute said that the program will be replaced in January with a new automated system at all ports of entry, aimed at expediting legitimate travel for all foreign nationals while making it more difficult for terrorists to be admitted.

Zahedi's odyssey began on Sept. 6, 2001, when he arrived in New York with his father and younger brother to attend the 54th annual international peace conference at the United Nations, hosted by the U.N. Department of Information/Nongovernmental Organizations.

It was the latest of several such events Zahedi had attended around the world with his father, Mansour Ghazi Zahedi, president of the Peace Center of Iran and a university professor in the country's capital city of Teheran.

After the conference, the family moved to Portsmouth, Va., where they have relatives, and Mansour Ghazi Zahedi set up a branch of the peace center.

While helping his father with his work, Zahedi struck up a long-distance relationship with Sharrieff, whom he met through an Internet chat room.

Zahedi found that he had a lot in common with the 29-year-old single mom, who had been raised in the Islamic faith when her father converted to Islam. The two decided to marry, and Zahedi moved to Sharrieff's San Bernardino home.

When the government announced its special registration program last year, Zahedi was among the first to comply. Accompanied by his wife, he brought copies of various forms that he had mailed to immigration officials to adjust his status and apply for a work permit, based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen.

After complying with the call-in registration, Zahedi received a letter from immigration officials, notifying him to return in December for an interview to complete his employment authorization application.

When he arrived at the San Bernardino immigration office, however, immigration officers arrested him.
A notice-to-appear form, issued by immigration officials, indicates he was detained because his visa had expired and he was "out of status."

While that was technically true, immigration records show that Zahedi had an application pending to adjust his status.

Before Sept. 11, immigration officials generally would have released someone in Zahedi's situation on bond or, more often, on their own recognizance until their status was decided by the court, immigration officials and private immigration lawyers said.

Searching for clues to the reason for his incarceration, Zahedi recalled that during an earlier interview, immigration officials grilled him and his wife about their marriage, which took place two days before his visa expired.

A cryptic order from Kilroy during Zahedi's detention stated that while Zahedi was eligible for bond, "because of circumstances provided to the court," he would not be released.

In his first month at the Mira Loma detention facility, Zahedi consulted two lawyers. One wanted more money than he could afford; the other, an Iranian national, proved next to useless in court, Zahedi said.
Zahedi, who graduated from law school in Iran, then tried representing himself, to little avail.

Frenzen, former head of the Immigration Rights Project at Los Angeles' Public Counsel, had gained freedom for a group of Iraqi dissidents from the 1991 Gulf War, prevailing in two high-profile trials before an immigration judge in San Pedro.

In November 2000, Frenzen left Public Counsel to set up Southern California's only immigration law clinic at USC, which allows students to work on actual cases.

With his students' help, Frenzen managed to get immigration officials to approve Zahedi's application to immigrate through his wife, clearing the way for Kilroy to set bail of $10,000. Kilroy's order also opens the door to Zahedi applying for a green card.

" Obviously, we're very happy that he has been released, but we think the $10,000 bond was excessive," Frenzen said. He noted that Kilroy had granted a drug trafficker a $15,000 bond that same day.

" The family had to rely on all their resources to come up with the money," Frenzen said.

Frenzen said that Zahedi's long detention appeared to be an unfortunate consequence of the lingering effects of the post-Sept. 11 security crackdown on immigrants.

Moreover, Frenzen said, Kilroy seemed persuaded by the Homeland Security prosecutors' insistence that Zahedi's marriage was a fraud, even after immigration officials had determined it was valid.

Now that Zahedi has been released, Frenzen said that he will continue representing him before an immigration judge in downtown Los Angeles in his bid for permanent residency.

While Zahedi has nothing but gratitude for the efforts of Frenzen and his students, he was less forgiving of some federal officials.

" I don't want to accuse anyone of something," Zahedi said of his ordeal, "but Professor Frenzen understood the situation and said, 'Let's see what we can do.'"