Jordanian college student ordered deported without hearing

PITTSBURGH – An immigration judge has ordered the deportation of a Jordanian attending La Roche College for failing to register with a federal program that tracks visitors from primarily Muslim countries.

Abdelqader Abu-Snaineh, 22, said he will catch a flight from New York City and leave the country on Tuesday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Sunday.

Abu-Snaineh was led off the suburban Pittsburgh campus in handcuffs in June 2003 because he did not show up to register with the National Security Entry Exit Registration System, which targets visitors from 25 countries, mainly in the Middle East. The program was set up following the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I was disappointed. I would have explained everything,” Abu-Snaineh said, saying he didn’t register because he was swamped with an 18-credit class load at the time. “I would have told him that I really was intending to register. There was no political reason why I wouldn’t register.”

But Abu-Snaineh didn’t get to say that in person because Judge Donald Ferlise issued the deportation order without a hearing on Friday, saying he had already decided months ago that the student purposely didn’t register.

Elaine Komis, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, said testimony is usually taken in such cases but doesn’t have to be.

Immigration officials said Abu-Snaineh’s rights weren’t violated because the judge did consider written evidence submitted on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“He did receive his day in court. It was just on paper,” said Manny Van Pelt, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “That’s how these things sometimes go.”

Robert Whitehill, an attorney working with ACLU, said Ferlise told Abu-Snaineh’s attorneys he found the student acted willfully and was therefore deportable.

“I’ve never heard of not letting respondents testify, especially as to the substance of the case,” said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association of Washington, D.C. “The whole issue turns on whether it was willful or excusable. If he (the judge) is not willing to hear testimony, how can he make a fair decision?”

Abu-Snaineh was detained for nine days after his arrest last June. The case has prompted debate over whether the law, which required males older than 16 to be interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed, goes too far in the name of national security.

Abu-Snaineh had letters from the college’s administration, vouching for his character and his 3.2 grade-point average in computer science.

“You take a kid like this and you mistreat him in the way he’s been mistreated and you give fodder to our enemies to say, ‘Look, this isn’t such a great country after all,'” said Witold “Vic” Walczak, litigation director for the Pittsburgh ACLU office.

Abu-Snaineh said he still has a high opinion of America, but had this message for those who pushed for his deportation: “You did me wrong. And I didn’t expect that.”