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Feds Order Beloved Teacher Deported
http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=504775
Students, Fellow Teachers Say His Loss Would Be Devastating
By DEAN SCHABNER
Feb. 20, 2005 - Obain Attouoman is a Boston special education teacher
who is beloved by his students, respected by his peers and valued by
school administrators, but federal immigration authorities have ordered
him to be deported.

Attouoman, a native of Ivory Coast who has taught in the Boston public
schools for more than a decade, missed a hearing with a judge on his
application for political asylum in June 2001, because he says he
misread the handwritten date on the notice he received.

After more than three years of trying to get a new hearing, he has been
ordered to leave the country by March 4. He was originally ordered to
leave by Feb. 11, but after hundreds of students, parents and fellow
teachers demonstrated outside the Boston office of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement on Feb. 9, he was granted a three-week reprieve.

Immigration officials said the reprieve was to allow Attouoman and his
lawyers to try to find a country other than Ivory Coast, where he
believes his life would be in danger, that would allow him to enter.

"I made that mistake by misreading that date. We all make mistakes," he
said. "All I was asking for was that the court date be rescheduled. You
have to give everybody a chance to be heard before you make that
determination, to send a person back to a country at war, where his life
is in danger."

Attouoman fears that if he returns to Ivory Coast he will be thrown in
prison. He comes from a family of political activists and had been
imprisoned in his native country twice in 1990 for his involvement in a
teachers union and in an opposition political party, he said.

Aside from the mix-up over the date on the hearing notice, Attouoman has
never been in any trouble since he first started coming to the United
States in 1985, his lawyer said. And at the demonstration, his students
spoke about the kind of impact he has had since he began teaching some
of Boston's most troubled ninth-graders at Fenway High School.

"We love him and we need him at Fenway," student Antoinetta Kelly said.
"If he is gone, then a part of me is gone as well."

That demonstration was the second time his students and co-workers took
to the streets to help him. After Attouoman was arrested in November
2003 on an outstanding immigration warrant and detained for four months,
hundreds of his current and former students marched in his support.

They also wrote letters to the Boston office of the U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement. Fellow teachers, school officials, Boston City
Council members and U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano, among others, also wrote
in his support, and he was released in March 2004.

Attouoman's students, co-workers and lawyer Susan Cohen are hoping that
somehow he will be allowed to stay in the country beyond the current
deadline, at least until the end of the school year. Failing that, they
want him to be allowed to find a country besides his homeland where he
can go.

"It will hurt our school if he is forced to leave in the middle of the
school year," said Peggy Kemp, who runs Fenway High. "The students are
learning that there might be alternatives that even if you don't get
what you want, which is to allow him to stay permanently, we might get a
delay or we might find a safe place for him." Cohen, a lawyer with
Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo P.C., which has taken the
case pro bono, said that in 20 years of practicing immigration law she
has never seen a case that has drawn so much support, or one that could
hurt so many people if the government follows through with the
deportation.

"This is not just about him, this is about the community, the kids," she
said. "Losing him is more than personal, because it will affect so many
kids."

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has also appealed to immigration officials to
let Attouoman remain in the country and continue teaching.

"The mayor's feeing is that the kids love him, the parents love him, so
why shouldn't he be allowed to stay in the United States," said Seth
Gitell, Menino's spokesman.

Despite the outpouring of support for him and the numerous appeals to
reopen his case he has filed since he was ordered removed from the
United States in absentia in June 2001, the Board of Immigration Appeals
and the Immigration Court never allowed him to plead his case.

"He never got a chance to present his case to a judge because he missed
his hearing inadvertently. There's a problem in the system," Cohen said.
"It's almost embarrassing to live in a democracy where this could
happen.

Paula Grenier, a spokeswoman with the Boston office of the ICE, said the
decision to deport Attouoman was made by a judge, and that the ICE
merely enforces that order.

Elaine Komis, a spokeswoman with the Executive Office for Immigration
Review, said she could not discuss the decisions made by judges.

The director of the New England field office of the ICE, Bruce
Chadbourne, said Attouoman's case does not rise to the level where he
could make an exception for him and lift the deportation order,
according to Cohen and to Boston City Councilwoman Maura Hennigan, who
-- along with six of Attouoman's students and City Councilman Chuck
Turner -- met with Chadbourne after the Feb. 9 demonstration.

"He heard us out, but what he continued to say was that he felt Obain's
case didn't meet the level of last recourse," Hennigan said. "If you
have the ability to make these kinds of decisions, I can't imagine a
case that would merit it more than this one."

Attouoman first came to the United States in 1985, on a J-1 exchange
visitor visa to work at Camp Homeward Bound in upstate New York as a
camp counselor. He returned to Ivory Coast as required by his visa, and
came back to the United States to work at the camp every year through
1990.

He was arrested in Ivory Coast several times in the early 1990s, but
according to his lawyer these arrests were because of his activities as
a teachers union official and his involvement with the FPI, the Ivorian
Popular Front, a political party in which he was an active member.

The last time he was arrested, on March 17, 1992, was at a march to
protest the killing of university students by government soldiers, he
said. He was held at a military camp for over two weeks, and when he was
released, fearing for his safety, he left his home in the town of
Bingerville and moved to Abidjan, the capital, where he stayed with a
friend.

Even then, though, Attouoman showed his dedication to teaching,
commuting to Bingerville to continue working.

"I would not have a problem being sent back to the Ivory Coast if my
life would not be in danger there," he said.

On June 15, 1992, Attouoman obtained a J-1 exchange visitor visa from
the U.S. Consular Office in Ivory Coast, and arrived in the the United
States two days later.

From the beginning of his stay in the United States, Attouoman worked as
a teacher. His first two years he worked in an after-school program. In
September 1994, he began teaching in the Boston Public School system at
the Mary Lyon School, and eventually moved to Fenway High School.

He applied for political asylum on March 15, 1994, and was interviewed
on the application on June 13, 2000. Nine months later, on March 12,
2001, his asylum application was not approved by the asylum officer and
was referred to the Immigration Court. He had prepared his application
himself, and Cohen said that even though his case was solid, it was not
presented as thoroughly as it could have been.

Attouoman was sent a notice ordering him to appear before Immigration
Judge Eliza Klein in Boston. However, Attouoman said it was difficult to
read the handwritten date of the hearing, and he mistakenly believed it
was scheduled for July 7, 2001. In fact, the hearing was scheduled for
June 7, 2001, and he missed it.

On June 8, 2001, Klein ordered Attouoman deported.

Once he realized that he had missed his removal hearing, Attouoman
retained an attorney, who on June 18, 2001, filed an unsuccessful motion
to reopen the removal proceedings and rescind the in absentia order of
removal. The motion was denied on July 20, 2001.

Attouoman filed an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals, but
that was dismissed on Feb. 8, 2002.

After his appeal was denied, Attouoman understood that immigration
officials would contact him with instructions, but he said he did not
hear anything until Nov. 26, 2003, when he was arrested by the Boston
police on an outstanding immigration warrant as he was waiting to pick
up his car, which had been towed from in front of his school.

He was transferred into the custody of ICE and was held until March 4,
2004, when he was released on an order of supervision, following a
demonstration by students and co-workers, and a deluge of letters to
immigration officials on his behalf.

Since then he has been working with his lawyer to try to find a safe
haven if he is deported, and he continues to teach. He said it is the
only thing that gives him any comfort.

"It helps me deal with it, because when I'm in the classroom I forget
about it for a little while," he said. "When I'm with the kids, it takes
my mind off it to do the thing I love."

ABC News affiliate WCVB-TV in Boston contributed to this report.

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