Etcetera

Video: Hazel Park resident deported by ICE dies in Iraq

August 09, 2019, 6:25 AM

A 41-year-old man who lived in metro Detroit since he was a baby has died in Iraq after being deported.

Jimmy Al-Daoud, formerly of Hazel Park, was deported in early June and died because he didn't have access to insulin, the Detroit Free Press reports. He was homeless, mentally ill and had been convicted of 20 crimes, many of them petty.

In a Facebook video recorded in Iraq two weeks after Al-Daoud's deportation, he explains he was sent to the country even though he'd never been there. According to the Freep, Al-Daoud was Chaldean and, at six months old, emigrated with his parents — Iraqi refugees — to the U.S. from Greece.

"I've been in [the U.S.] pretty much my whole life," Al-Daoud says in the video. "I begged them, I said 'please, I've never seen that country' ... however, they forced me. I'm here now and I don't understand the language, anything. I've been sleeping in the streets, I'm diabetic, I take insulin shots, I've been throwing up ... I was kicked in the back a couple days ago," told to "get off the guy's property, he claimed it was his property."

Agents refused to listen and wouldn't let him call his family, he said.

Politico first reported on Aldaoud's story yesterday, quoting Edward Bajoka, a family friend and immigration attorney, who wrote on his Facebook page, "Rest in peace, Jimmy. Your blood is on the hands of ICE and this administration."

Aldaoud reportedly also suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

Politico quoted Michigan politicians, including Rep. Andy Levin, who said:

"Jimmy Aldaoud ... should have never been sent to Iraq. My Republican colleagues and I have repeatedly called on the executive branch to cease deportation of such vulnerable people. Now, someone has died."

Miriam Aukerman, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, echoed the Democratic congressman from Berkley:

“Jimmy’s death has devastated his family and us,” she said in a written statement. “We knew he would not survive if deported. What we don’t know is how many more people ICE will send to their deaths.”


Read more:  Detroit Free Press


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