Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2019 9:01:18 GMT -5
A Detroit diabetic was deported to Iraq, where he’d never lived. He died from lack of insulin, family says.
The 41-year-old with diabetes and severe mental illness had spent nearly his whole life in Detroit until just over two months ago, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him to Iraq — a country he’d never set foot in.
“I don’t understand the language,” Aldaoud said in an undated video shared to Facebook on Wednesday night. “I’m sleeping in the street. I’m diabetic. I take insulin shots. I’ve been throwing up, throwing up, sleeping in the street, trying to find something to eat. I’ve got nothing over here.”
This week, Aldaoud died in Baghdad, his family and the American Civil Liberties Union told the Detroit News, which first reported on his case. They believe his inability to obtain insulin was the cause of death.
Aldaoud’s supporters say he never should have been sent to a country short on health care and racked with civil unrest, especially as he’s a member of the Chaldean Catholic community, which has faced violent persecution since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
“This is a total failure of the whole immigration system,” Edward Bajoka, a Detroit immigration attorney and friend of Aldaoud’s family, told The Washington Post. “This guy should have been protected somewhere along the way.”
Immigration officials, though, paint Aldaoud as a repeat criminal who violated court orders. ICE officials in Detroit, in a statement to The Post, say he had 20 criminal convictions between 1998-2017, including several violent charges, and that he cut off a GPS device he was supposed to wear while on release from immigration custody.
“(His) immigration case underwent an exhaustive judicial review before the courts affirmed he had no legal basis to remain in the U.S.,” ICE’s Detroit office said in a statement, adding that he was sent back to Iraq with a “full complement of medicine."
His death comes as the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement, a move highlighted on Wednesday as hundreds were arrested in a massive raid. While most of the national argument has focused on undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America, Aldaoud’s case shows the plight of hundreds of Iraqi Christians who could soon face a forced return to the dangerous nation.