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Posted on 12/18/2001 9:09:11 AM PST by ex-Texan

Man faces deportation after years as 'American'

RICHARD READ

For 25 years, Farhad Toussi lived the life of an American. He graduated from high school, married a Wisconsin woman, started a family, ran a towing company, sold cars and time-share condos, attended Christian church, paid taxes and maintained a 401(k).

The nagging problem was that Toussi, 37, wasn't actually American -- he's Iranian. But, like an estimated 4 million other foreigners, he's in the United States on an expired visa.

Suddenly after Sept. 11, the problem came home to Toussi in the form of three U.S. immigration agents. They escorted him from his Aloha house Sept. 27 as his horrified wife and children watched, lodging him in the Yamhill County jail, where he remains pending deportation.

Toussi is the first Portland-area foreigner to acknowledge being arrested because of increased vigilance following the terrorist attacks.

No one is suggesting Toussi has anything to do with terrorism. He is not one of the thousands of Middle Eastern men targeted nationwide by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft for the questioning that Portland police refused to conduct.

Rather, Toussi is one of many foreigners who have melted into U.S. society, often without even trying, after their student visas expired. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is cracking down on such people because of the attacks.

Another Middle Eastern man in Portland, Khaled M. Al-Otaibi, who was arrested in October for failing to attend school while on a student visa, has been deported to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. attorney's office said Monday. Authorities won't say whether removal of Al-Otaibi, 32, was related to the Sept. 11 attacks, but he was not wanted for questioning about terrorist activities.

Ed Sale, INS Portland District community relations officer, said three judges all ruled Toussi should be deported before he dropped out of INS view in 1991. The agency had issued a warrant for Toussi's arrest in 1990, Sale said, after the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed earlier orders for him to depart within 30 days.

"The gentleman has had many opportunities to go through appeal processes all the way up to the 8th Circuit," Sale said, "and they've all upheld the decision of deportation."

Sale said Monday that Toussi admitted in 1987 to trying to become legal by fraudulently marrying a U.S. citizen, whom he divorced before marrying his current wife. Toussi's wife said the marriage was never proved fraudulent.

Toussi's application for political asylum was denied in 1987, Sale said.

Toussi said that as a Christian -- he and his family attend the Beaverton Foursquare Church -- he would be subject to persecution and likely death in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He speaks some Farsi but can no longer read and write the language.

"I'd basically be a beggar on the side of the street over there," Toussi said. "I'd like the chance to prove to the U.S. government that I've been a good citizen, unless they don't have room for one more person."

Sale downplays the danger Toussi would face in his home country. He said the INS has deported many people to Iran, including Christians, and has never received word of persecution. "If he is concerned about Iran," Sale said, "we'd be glad to work with him and his attorney and find another country that will take him."

Toussi, who runs an Internet car-parts business with his brother, got caught after he went to a U.S. Customs Service office at Portland International Airport on Sept. 24 to pick up some headlight bulbs shipped from China. He had been to Customs twice before, prior to Sept. 11, without any problem.

But this time, an official asked him for his nationality. "Persian," Toussi said. What's your status in this country? the man asked. "I'm a resident," Toussi told him. The official told Toussi he would have to return with a number -- of a green card, Toussi assumed -- before the shipment could be released.

That night, Toussi told his wife, Patricia, that he expected the INS to track him down. She reassured him, noting that his address -- listed in the phone book -- was no secret and saying that if they ever had wanted him they would have come looking.

On the evening of Sept. 27, three plainclothes INS agents showed up at the Toussi family's manufactured home in Aloha. Patricia was cooking spaghetti. Daughter Jessica, 13, was on the computer. Son Cameron was playing with his "Jurassic Park" toys, gifts for his 10th birthday the day before. Toussi was packing car parts for shipment.

The agents escorted Toussi out of the house. They searched him and put him in a white sport utility vehicle. The children -- prohibited from jail visits because they are under 18 -- haven't seen their father since.

"We always worried about it," said Patricia Toussi of the possibility that the INS could come for her husband. "We never hid. We've always paid our taxes. I mean, America, this is his country."

Toussi said he came to the United States when he was 12 with his aunt and a cousin, speaking no English and seeking a better life. He was the son of a government worker and a schoolteacher, who he said had recently gained U.S. asylum because of their Christian religion.

Toussi, raised as a Christian, attended a private Catholic school in Duluth, Minn. He said he knew next to nothing about Islam. His visa expired under U.S. immigration law, after he graduated from high school, Sale said.

In adulthood, Toussi lived as any American citizen would, other than being unable to vote or to travel outside the country. Credit records show he has a Social Security number, issued in 1979 or 1980. He changed driver's licenses routinely as the couple moved from the Midwest to Colorado to California to Oregon. He says he was pulled over for several minor traffic violations without his immigration status being questioned.

In Oregon, he worked for a car dealer and a condominium sales company. "On an application they ask, 'Are you a U.S. citizen?' and I said, 'Yes,' " Toussi said. "I had to lie to support my family."

He and his wife filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1999 after business and health problems, and that didn't set off any alarms either.

Only when Toussi tried to buy a handgun as the millennium approached was his application rejected. He says he called the number on the form to find out why and was told that a computer identified him as an illegal alien.

"It really for the first time in my life since I was 23 years old hit me that I was an illegal alien," Toussi said.

Patricia Toussi, a human resources coordinator in Hillsboro, said she applied to the INS last spring to get her husband legal status as the spouse of a U.S. citizen. But Sale said a prior fraudulent marriage would disqualify such an application.

Foreigners deported from the United States must wait at least 10 years to return, Sale said. In some cases when added complications are involved, he said, a deportee never gets to come back.

INS officials are trying to get Toussi to submit to a telephone interview with Iranian diplomats in Washington, D.C., to get identification papers that would allow his departure. But David Shomloo, Toussi's lawyer in Portland, adamantly objects to the idea, which the INS offered at one point as a condition for a temporary release from jail requested by U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith.

"It's ridiculous. It's unreasonable," said Shomloo, himself an Iranian immigrant. "They want him to alert the Islamic Republic of Iran as to who he is and who his parents are. The punishment for an apostate in Iran is death."

The Board of Immigration Appeals issued a temporary stay of deportation for Toussi but revoked it last week, Sale said. He said he couldn't disclose the board's reasoning because the matter was still in litigation.

In the living room of the couple's Aloha home, Patricia Toussi struggles to fill orders for car parts on evenings and weekends. Shomloo says he will try to reopen Toussi's immigration case under a convention against torture.

"All I want," Toussi said, "is an hour in court."

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