- Says I was handcuffed, chained on 12-hour flight
While many Nigerians are bitten by the japa bug and they desperately seek refuge in foreign lands in search of a better life, many who jetted out without proper documentation are living to regret their actions. Among them is 55-year-old returnee, Oluwashina Ahmed, who spoke to GBENGA ADERANTI about his nasty encounters with immigration officials in the US, UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
His broad smiles and calm mien betrayed the rough encounters he has had with immigration officials in no fewer than four European countries from where he was deported back to his fatherland. But behind the façade of smiles is the trauma fifty-five-year-old Ahmed has had to endure in his 22-year search for greener pastures.
Although he now functions as a petty trader selling native herbs and sachet liquor, Ahmed has not given up on his bid to return to America and continued life from where he stopped in God’s Own Country. “I want a judicial review of my deportation,” he said in a firm voice that conveyed more of entitlement than privilege. “I want my deportation case to be reviewed by the government of the United States because I didn’t get a fair hearing before I was deported.”
Ahmed’s lifestyle and living standard are a contradiction of his travelling experience. Spotting a loosely buttoned shirt made with Ankara fabric when the reporter met him on a Thursday afternoon, he seemed to bother less about what challenge life has left. Popularly called “Doctor’ in his Lagos neighbourhood, he acknowledged greetings left, right, and centre from those who hailed as he walked by.
The father of one had travelled to the United States as a young man in November 1991 in the hope of studying radio and television broadcasting, but his dream could not translate to reality until he was deported after he had spent 10 years and eight months in the country.
While in the US, he registered a business and had a good clientele base, most of whom were great Nigerian artistes, particularly those of Yoruba extraction, who went to the United States to perform. “I was renting out sound equipment. I arranged sound equipment for Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, Shina Peters, Orlando Owoh, Shina Akani, and other Nigerian musicians,” he said.
Two years after he arrived in the US, he applied for asylum in New York City where he was given an Employment Authorization Card (EAD), which was renewable every year. An EAD was equivalent to the subsidiary protection status of the United Nations Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. With this, he was able to obtain a Social Security Number (SSN), a driver’s licence, and other important documents.
Armed with the foregoing, he started his educational career at New York City Technical College, Brooklyn, from where he moved to St. Petersburg, FL, and then to Tampa Community College.
It was at Tampa College that vents began to take an untoward turn.
He said “I did not complete one college semester in Tampa because of police brutality, abuse of power, and prolonged detention, l had to leave Tampa for Atlanta, Georgia.
“In Georgia, l applied to Dekalb College now Georgia Perimeter as a transfer student from New York. I was admitted to the Department of Radio and Television Broadcasting.”
Seeing an opportunity for him to complete his associate degree or apply to university as a transfer student, he applied to Georgia State University and was granted admission.
“Thereafter, I filed for my adjustment of status with my wife, Rosetta Johnson. While waiting on that, l was introduced to one Joseph Michael Kalady by one of the members of Cherubim & Seraphim Church in Decatur,” he said.
His dream, he said, was to obtain a degree from Georgia State University. In fact the admission was on because it was intentionally deferred by him. However, at the point of going back to the varsity, he got embroiled in a birth certificate and social security number imbroglio in 2001.
According to Ahmed, it was not usual among foreigners who did not have proper documents to stay in the US to regularise their stay by hiring professionals, especially, lawyers to perfect their papers.
Narrating the genesis of his predicament, Ahmed said: “I lived in Atlanta. The lawyer was helping people to obtain US citizenship through the Secretary of Agriculture.
“That was when I was arrested because unknown to me, the documents the lawyer obtained were false.”
Although he believed he had no reason to doubt that the papers were genuine as the lawyer was said to have done the job perfectly for others, Ahmed was caught. To worsen matters, it was about the time Ahmed was going to start his education at Georgia State University.
“When it became apparent that I was in a big mess, rather than go for trial, I decided to go for a plea bargain because it would be less expensive for the state and on my part too because I would not need to hire a private lawye.
“The deal was six months in prison and three years’ probation,” he said.
He had spent about five months in detention by the time his case came up for hearing again. To the chagrin of Ahmed, the judge sentenced him to five months imprisonment and ordered him deported.
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“I was like why would the judge order me for deportation? According to US law, you have to be charged with judicial deportation.
“The practice was that the US attorney would inform the commissioner for immigration that they had instituted a judicial deportation. The commissioner for immigration would now come and represent the immigration at the judicial court to see if the crime committed warrants deportation and if that person has a legal status.”
But Ahmed was not allowed to go back to Atlanta. He filed an appeal with the United States of Court Appeals, but while his appeal was pending, he asked for a change of venue since he had served a five five-month sentence in Chicago.
He said: “All proceedings regarding my immigration case were in Atlanta Georgia. That was where my school was, that was where my family was, that was where my business was.
“I requested a change of venue through Habeas Corpus from the United States District Court Northern District of Illinois Chicago Division.”
But he said it was as if certain forces were working against him. The first hearing was held on 5/7/2002 by Hon. David H. Coar, but Ahmed was not made available in court by the United States Marshal Service. The same US Marshal had earlier served him the notice of court hearing with the case number as 1;02-cv 02713.
However, a hearing was held and continued on 6/4/2002 at 9 am, and this was also done in absentia. This time, he had completed his five-month sentencing, and he was not charged for deportation.
He said: “They refused to take me to court. The judge slated the hearing for June 4, 2002, but a day before the hearing, they just came to pack all of us who were Nigerians from Chicago Illinois prison. We were processed and transported to another state, I believe Ontario, Canada, and to Lagos.
“We were handcuffed and chained just like in the days of slavery, on a 12-hour flight.”
Ahmed believes he most probably would not have been deported if he had been given a fair hearing.
He said: “My resident card was granted by the court but was not given to me by the Tri-County Detention Center officials. My green card was presented for delivery by the postal service three times but was returned to the Attorney General of the United States.”
From the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, he and his colleagues were taken to Alagbon, Lagos where they stayed for another two days before they were eventually released after serious protests.
He said: “We had to embark on serious protests before they allowed us to go to our homes.
“We were there for two days. We asked them to tell us the crime we committed to warrant our detention. We did not commit any crime. They deported us unlawfully and the Nigerian authorities were still detaining us.
“Some of the deportees have children over there. I don’t think they will ever see their children again. Yet international law says they must give us fair hearing before being deported. It is a conventional protocol.”
Ahmed’s criminal case is still pending at the United States Court of Appeal.
Like America like Europe
If Ahmed’s deportation experience in the United States was bad, the one in Europe was nasty.
With the bad experience had in the US, he decided to give Europe a try in the hope that things would be better. That was not to be as he had to face harsher treatment in the United Kingdom.
Refused asylum in Ireland, he decided to try his luck in the UK, where he stayed for a while. His request for asylum would probably have been granted but the lawyer who represented him did not file for judicial review, though Ahmed had told the home office that he had applied for asylum in Ireland.
In retrospect, Ahmed told The Nation that it was possible that it was his lawyer who told the Nigeria High Commission to issue the Emergency Travel Certificate (ETC) to the then immigration service.
The authorities in the UK gave him accommodation for a while, and while his application was still being considered, he was told that his case had been posted to the Third Country Unit. They said the person handling his case was on maternity leave, and that when she returned, they would call him for an interview to decide whether he would remain in the UK or be sent back to Ireland.
He said: “From the United Kingdom, I travelled to Ireland where I applied for an asylum which was subsequently denied. And, following the failure of my lawyer to submit an application for a judicial review with regards to the aforementioned denial, I travelled back to the United Kingdom where I also applied for asylum, informing the UK immigration of my previous application for asylum in Ireland which was denied.
“The UK immigration accepted my application and transferred the same to the third country unit where my application was allotted to a female caseworker who was said to be on maternity leave at the time.
“I was directed to be reporting every week at a police station in London pending the resumption of my caseworker who would interview me before any other proceeding in my case.
“Unfortunately, while I was waiting for my caseworker to come back from her maternity leave to conduct the said interview, I was detained at the police station at the time I was performing my weekly obligation of reporting.
“Upon being detained by the UK Border Agency, I filed a judicial review requesting subsidiary protection. The Court of Justice ruled that it could not stop my deportation and that I could go and apply for subsidiary protection in Ireland.
“I was transported to Ireland without my knowledge of any travel document used in implementing the said deportation to Ireland.
“On my arrival in Ireland, I was unlawfully detained at Cloverhill Prison in Dublin as an immigration detainee with local prisoners under prison number ‘73356’.
“I subsequently, under Rule 39, filed an application to stop my deportation with the European Court of Human Rights after which I was visited by an Irish government official alongside a representative of the Nigeria High Commission.
“During the aforesaid visit, I exhibited a copy of my outstanding petition with the European Court of Human Rights to the visiting staff member of the Nigeria High Commission, asking to be allowed to have my petition resolved by the European Court of Human Rights before any talk on the issuance of Emergency Travel Certificate (ETC) would be necessary.”
It seemed his predicament had ended when the European Court of Human Rights responded, requesting that he should send certain documents relating to his case within a certain period of time. However, he observed that the said letter from the European Court of Human Rights was provided to him by a prison official in a cut-opened envelope after the expiration of the deadline given to him by the court to respond.
He said almost immediately, he was transported to another country, the Netherlands.
“There, I persistently demanded a copy of the Emergency Travel Document (ETC) which was used by Irish authorities to transport me to the Netherlands.
“Upon being provided with the same by an Irish official, I discovered that rather than my prison number ‘73356’ in the Ireland, it was my prison number ‘23440’ in the United States of America being noted on the Emergency Travel Document (ETC) which the United States Government used to deport me in 2002, that was noted on the said ETC provided to me by the Irish Government.
“I believe that it was a copy of the ETC which was issued in the United States in 2002 that the Irish authority was using to effect my deportation in 2011.”
Upon discovering the aforementioned ETC fraud, Ahmed lodged a formal complaint, attaching a copy of the said ETC, and forwarded the same to the then-Irish Minister of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva. Unfortunately, he did not get any response from them.
From the Netherlands, he was transported back to Ireland where he was later transported in a chartered plane alongside other Nigerians to Spain. His instinct told him to protest, but wisdom told him to accept his fate as doing so could spell disaster.
“We were offloaded into another parked chartered plane loaded with Nigerians from various destinations such as Spain, Germany, and Australia, with whom I was finally deported together to Nigeria.
“My luggage containing all my personal property, my legal documents including a copy of the very ETC made available to me by an Irish official, was not provided to me as I arrived in Nigeria empty handed!
“The Secretary of Security and Justice of the Netherlands confirmed in a letter dated March 15, 2012, that my luggage was given to the Irish officials who escorted me out of the Netherlands but the Irish officials failed to give them to me.
“During processing at the Murtala Muhammad International Airport in Nigeria on arrival, I was shown a different ETC as the ETC which was purportedly used to effect my deportation to Nigeria, evidencing the fact that two different ETCs were used in my deportation.”
In his quest for justice, he said he visited the Nigeria Immigration Service at Alagbon, Ikoyi, Lagos to request a copy of the very ETC that was shown to him at the Murtala Muhammad International Airport. Unfortunately, the attending immigration officials vehemently refused to provide him with any assistance but rather threatened him with detention if he failed to leave the premises.
While in Nigeria, sometime in May 2013, he was contacted by one Celestine Anafuwe, the Project Officer for MasterMinds HRSG Consulting, for a three-week programme on ‘Employability and Entrepreneurship skill development’ for deportees, said to be sponsored by the United Kingdom government.
Ahmed said: “I was motivated to attend the said programme which took place at Alforscar Hotel in Igando area of Lagos State upon being assured that all my concerns about my illegal and ‘fraudulent deportation’ would be addressed by the organisers of the programme.
“After attending the programme for a week (from June 13, 2013, to June 19, 2013), I decided to quit simply because the programme was not addressing my concerns as promised.”
However, after he exited the programme, he got to know that a female official in charge of travel documents at the Nigeria High Commission in London, Mrs. Ngere, visited the programme and that she apologised for issuing Emergency Travel Certificates (ETC) which she was not supposed to have issued.
In his quest to get justice, he requested from the Nigerian Immigration Service a copy of the Emergency Travel Document which was used by the government of the United States of America and that of the United Kingdom to effect his deportation in 2002 and 2011 respectively, but till date, the said requests are yet to be responded to.
Grappling with despair, frustration
As despair and frustration set in, Ahmed was deposed to an affidavit sometime in April 2023. Part of the said affidavit sworn to at the Chief Magistrate Court of Lagos State in the Yaba Magisterial District Holden reads: “I am facing extreme hardship and poverty since my unlawful deportation from the United Kingdom in 2011.
“That I am unemployed since both deportations occurred.
“That I reside with my mother Alhaja W.A Ahmed in the family house.
“That I only survive from contributions from family members, friends, and other relatives.
“That I am so poor that I cannot pay for my application fee.
“That in Nigeria, there is no benefit claim for victims of unlawful deportation.
“That this affidavit is required for record and official purposes.”
No hard feelings
Ahmed is currently working on a project with one of his colleagues with whom he was ‘deported illegally’ from the U.S. They were deported at different periods. While Ahmad’s colleague was deported in 1999, Ahmed was deported in 2002 from the US before they later met again in the U.K.
Despite his ugly experience, he would not discourage those who still wish to travel abroad not to go. “I would advise those who want to travel abroad to still go because migration is a natural law, it is a natural right, though things have changed in the world now since September 11.
“The only advice I will give those who want to travel is that before you go, you have to get your status, because back then it didn’t matter if you had status or not. Things are no longer the way they used to be. If you are travelling abroad, plan to get your status.
“That should be your priority. Make sure they start processing your papers as soon as possible.”
