Who Is Syed Ahmed Jamal? Community Tries To Save Academic From Deportation
The community joined forces to save chemistry academic Syed Ahmed Jamal, who’s lived in the United States for three decades and now faces deportation to Bangladesh.
Syed Ahmed Jamal, who has lived in the country for 30 years, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials on Jan. 24 on his front lawn in Lawrence, Kansas. According to his brother, Jamal was about to take his daughter to school and was startled to find the agents waiting to arrest him in the front of his house, reports said.
Jamal, 55, according to reports, fought tirelessly to obtain U.S citizenship for decades and first entered the country in 1987 on an international student visa. His three children are all U.S. citizens. However, his wife is not a citizen of the country and might face a similar fate.
Jamal graduated from Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1997 and worked as a chemistry teacher in several different colleges and universities. He worked as an adjunct faculty member at his alma mater, Rockhurst University, from 2013 to 2015. Prior to his arrest, Jamal began teaching at Park University in Missouri in January as an adjunct instructor of chemistry, and taught at the laboratory for advanced inorganic chemistry.
He was detained once before for overstaying his departure date when a federal judge extended his departure date to August 2002 and asked him to leave the country. Jamal abided by the ruling and left the country. However, he then entered the country legally on a non-migrant visa in October 2002 and again overstayed his departure date. Following this, a judge asked him to leave the country in 2011 but this time he ignored the ruling and stayed in the country post the departure date and was detained by officials in 2012. However, he was allowed to stay in the U.S indefinitely under policy formalized by President Barack Obama.
The Community joined forces and are trying to get Jamal released from the detention center in Morgan County, Missouri. A petition on Change.org, in hopes of obtaining enough signatures to prevent Jamal from being deported, was set up. The petition reads: "Mr. Syed Ahmed Jamal, a well-respected scientist and community leader, was arrested by ICE — on his front lawn, in front of his children. Now he’s at risk of being deported to Bangladesh, where he is an ethnic minority and would be in serious danger."
So far the page has obtained 37,843 signatures. In addition, a GoFundMe page was set up and has raised $27,650 to help the family with legal fees.
ICE said Jamal came to the agency’s attention when he was arrested on misdemeanor criminal charges in Kansas in September 2012. Following the arrest ICE agents detained Jamal and subsequently released him under supervision. ICE asked him to report to an ICE office in November 2012. In May 2013, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed Jamal's appeal of his removal order.
“To effect this removal order, deportation officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Jamal outside his residence on Jan. 24, 2018. He is currently in ICE custody pending his removal to Bangladesh," ICE said in a statement, ABC News reported
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