A Bangladeshi mother fighting to stay with her son and husband in the United States was granted a last-minute stay before she was to be deported back to her country.
On Wednesday, Salma Sikandar and her family in New Haven, Connecticut had lost all hope when the Board of Immigration denied their appeal for an emergency stay.
But a few hours later, their lawyer called them to say that in a rather unusual move the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials had decided to grant her a stay.
“It doesn’t happen very often and I broke into tears and cried like a baby,” said her husband Anwar Mahmud, who was on a hunger strike with a few local activists for the last two days.
Nearly a hundred people had gathered outside the courthouse to urge ICE officials for a stay, chanting “Keep Salma Home” and “Justice for Salma”.
The family also got support from US Democrat Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, who released a statement on Twitter after the stay order.
“Salma Sikandar's stay of removal has been granted by ICE. I welcome this news and will continue working with her, her family, and her lawyers to ensure she can stay in the United States,” she said.
Salma Sikandar, came to the US from Bangladesh 20 years ago and met her husband in New York. They have a 17-year-old son and live in New Haven.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she had overstayed her tourist visa by more than 18 years and was ordered to leave the country in 2016.
Her husband says she had filed a hardship application in 2011 to stay in the country to take care of her son, but it was denied in 2016 and further appeals were denied too.
Mahmud, too, is undocumented and the hearing on his appeal for political asylum is scheduled for July 2019.
For now, the family can breathe a little easy. Their son, Samir Mahmud, begins his first year at the Quinnipiac University on Aug 27 and it’s a great moment for them.
“He is the first in our family to go to college and it is all my wife and I have wanted,” said Mahmud, who works as a manager at McDonald’s.
“The biggest celebration for us is that we are still together as a family,” he added.
President Donald Trump has advocated a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system emphasising a priority on removing immigrants who commit crimes in the US. But in the recent months, many undocumented immigrants without any criminal record have also been picked for deportation.
ICE officials maintain that they continue to focus on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security but "ICE does not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement".