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NEW YORK, NY April 30, 2003 —

Click here for a slide show.The United States has enlisted Pakistan as a friend in its effort to combat terrorism. But domestically, Pakistanis are among those being sought out and deported for immigration violations that used to be overlooked. More than a thousand have been deported in the last 18 months, and thousands more have left on their own to avoid being locked up and sent away. Many Pakistanis feel double-crossed. WNYC's Marianne McCune followed several Pakistani deportees home for this special report - to see what happens when they get there.

N: When Ajaz Ahmad first got a visa to come to the United States, he says he rode his bicycle home with his passport and visa in his shoe.

Ajaz: I don't want to lose that passport! I don't want to lose it.

N: He was 24 years old, his father had died many years before, and his family in Lahore was poor. Within days of arriving in New York, he got an off-the-books job working overnights at a Yonkers gas station. He listened every night to the radio in his booth - KTU 103.5 with lots of Mariah Carey. It was 1994.

Ajaz: Whenever people wanted gas, they give me money and I open the pump and they put gas and they left. There is nothing to do with English anything. After six months, I was crying because I don't know how to talk. And a lot of girls want to talk.

N: He says his Pakistani roommate told him, go get a girl's number and talk to her on the phone. So he got a number from one of his customers - a Puerto Rican nurse who worked nights as well.

Ajaz: Night finish, I go home, I don't want to eat, I don't want to sleep, I don't want to go to the bathroom, I just want to call the lady. I call her and she say, Yeah? You don't speak English so why don't you meet me and I can teach you. I go to her house and then she teach me a lot of English. She teach me that you gotta talk to the people!

Ajaz: When you saw there's nothing to do and it's very slow, if nice person, open the door, ask him how are you? How old are you? What's your business? How many kids you have and blah blah blah all that stuff. Believe me after three months, I can talk with everybody.

N: He got a social security card, a drivers' license, a car -- for a long time, America lived up to all Ajaz's expectations. That was 9 years ago.

N: Now, Ajaz is suddenly back where he started. He's arriving in Islamabad airport, on a plane the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has chartered to deport more than a hundred Pakistanis from the United States. They pour out of a 17 hour flight on which they were forced to wear plastic handcuffs.

Deportee: What I'll do? I'll do nothing. I have children over there. What I'll do?!

N: Most are like Ajaz - they overstayed a visa, filed a false application, missed a court date.

Deportee 2: My all property lost, my passport's lost, everything lost.
Deportee 3: FBI told me, give me people, Pakistani people, Muslim people.
Deportee 4: I no like America!! I like Pakistan!!!!!! Pakistan! I love Pakistan.

N: Photographs of a man kissing the ground at the airport are printed in an array of local newspapers the following day, along with accounts of nasty prison guards, lost belongings and using the airplane bathroom with handcuffs on.

Ajaz: They treating us like animals. That's it.

N: Ajaz comes off the plane in the fast food manager's uniform he was arrested in: navy slacks, short-sleeved light blue button up shirt. The hair he used to wear gelled back droops down over his forehead.

Ajaz: They think all Muslim people did September 11th. But we are working, our families are back there. How I feel my wife is back there? N: When he left New York, Ajaz's wife was nearly 8 months pregnant with their first child - she couldn't travel, he couldn't stay.

N: Here's how all this happened. Nine years ago, Ajaz broke United States immigration laws. He came on a six-month visitor's visa, then he says he made a false application for political asylum. When an immigration judge confronted him in court, he signed papers saying he would leave the country voluntarily within a year but he did not.

Ajaz: Because of my greediness? You can say that. When I say I'm going to leave the country, the lawyer say, you can stay here, nobody going to throw you out. So I said yeah I'm going to leave. And after that nobody asked me anything. I was scared a little bit, but after 2 years, 3 years, I say, Oh, lawyer was ok, lawyer was saying the truth, nobody going to touch you. But after September 11th, they touch everybody.

N: Before September 11th, the INS said publicly its focus was on catching and deporting illegal immigrants who committed crimes, not those who overstayed visas. Doris Meissner was Commissioner from 1993 to 2000.

Meissner: It's been an open secret for a long time and it shouldn't have been as relaxed as it was.

N: Since the terrorist attacks, law enforcement agents have been seeking out certain visa violators from countries the U.S. Attorney General says have a history of Al Qaeda presence.

N: The INS found Ajaz at the Taco Bell he managed.

Ajaz: I opened the store, I was very nice, beautiful, you know like, gel in my hair, shaved and perfumed and everything. And one of my girl employees, she say, oh look these two guys come. And these two guys was from immigration. They ask me, What's your name? I say, Ajaz. We want to talk to you. You have a greencard? I say no. They he said, ok, you have to go with us.

Ajaz: The FBI guys said, if you help us, we going to let you go. Because you have a clean record. We're going to show you some pictures, you gonna find out who you know. Say ok. They put papers on the table and then they said, you know this guy this guy this guy? I say, No no no. Then they put finger on Osama Bin Laden. I say yeah, I know this guy. And everybody alert and they said, where is he and how you know? I say I saw everyday on TV. Then they got mad. And then they said, sit down, now you going to go to jail.

N: Back when Ajaz failed to leave the country as he promised, he was ordered deported. Now that order was being enforced.

Ajaz: If I have a deportation 95, why they catching me in 2003, why? What's the reason? It hurts, I mean, you want to catch me catch me after one year and one day! Don't catch me after 8 years and you telling me you have deportation order? Unbelievable. That kind of stuff I don't understand.

N: Now Ajaz has spent 2 and a half months in jail. His new friends are a motley crew of New Yorkers like him - deported in prison sweats or in the clothes they were wearing at arrest. They've all got several layers of 5 o'clock shadow. One is a 25 year old hipster, wearing a DKNY t-shirt, Steve Madden shoes and XOXO jeans. Salim is at the same time revved up to speak out and afraid to let me use his real name.

Salim: After we got into Islamabad, they took our handcuffs off. And me and my friend, we did not take them off. Because we were like, what about security, where's the security issue right now? But they did not allow us to do that.

N: Pakistani Embassy officials have given them each $30 to $80 to make their way home.

Ajaz: We need to buy some clothes. We not going to go like this in my house. We need to fresh.

N: They decide what they need first is a shave, so they hitch a ride to town with a local journalist. In the car, Salim borrows a cell phone to call his family.

Salim: Hello, hello! I'm ok, how are you? Ne ne ne ne. No, you don't need to come here now. I know you guys didn't know. Because of the national security reasons they did not tell us when the flight was leaving. And what time we'll be where.

N: By the time Salim was arrested in New York, he knew he had a deportation order against him. He came on a student visa in 1998, but says he got sick, took too few credits to sustain his visa, and worked illegally off campus to pay his medical bills. He was ordered deported when he didn't show up in court to defend himself. Last February, he was in the midst of trying to reopen his case. He'd since married his girlfriend, an American citizen, and together they were applying for his legal papers. He says he last met with his lawyer on February 13th.

Salim: Next morning, Friday, Feb 14th, I had people knocked at my door at 6:30 in the morning while I was in bed with my wife. My wife went there, at the door. They said police. They came in the apartment and said that we are here to check out Taliban. They followed her down to the bedroom. She was shaking. I tried to tell them that I'm supposed to meet my lawyer today to re-appeal my case. He said that we don't care that you go to lawyer, submit your thing, whatever whatever. But so far, currently you have deportation orders. Then, they put me in the cell.

(END OF PHONE CALL, Salim: Ok mom, love you too. Ahhhhh man!)

N: Ajaz is staring with far away eyes at the motorcycles and bicycles and pedestrians and crazy-colored buses and cart-towing mules weaving every which way. Salim keeps grabbing the back of the front seat when the traffic comes too close.

Salim: Ahhh! I'm going to get a headache.

N: They find a barbershop in a quiet alley behind the Raja Bazaar and stare into mirrors while barbers lather shaving cream on their faces.

Jawed Iqbal (while being shaved): Feels strange. Feel happy and feel sad.

N: Salim skips the shave and sits down outside on an old bed-spring - thinking of his high rise apartment building and doorman and elevator. A mangy dog wanders over and curls up.

Salim: What is it doing, sneezing? So I'm in the middle of this place where I see towels hanging on a rope, from one wall to another wall. Traditional shoes. And boots not polished. People staring at me literally, that's what's most scary right now.

N: As if to transport himself, Salim pulls out a few photos of his wife back in New York - she grew up in California with parents from India.

Salim: Ahhhhh! That was a birthday kiss from her. Isn't she cute? I miss her now. (OTHERS COME OUT OF BARBERSHOP) Oh look at you guys!

N: Out come the clean shaven --

Salim: Oh my! Are you the same guys who came with me? Look at you!

N: Now, they can head home. And by the end of a four hour bus ride to Lahore, they are giddy looking out the window at the city they grew up in.

Salim: What do you think? Malik: I'm lost!

N: Ajaz really does get momentarily lost in the cab home from the bus station.

Salim: Do you want to call? Ah ha ha ha! I can't believe it.

N: But he eventually finds the dirt road that leads to his house. He rings repeatedly, as he always used to, and in the twilight, he's greeted by nephews, nieces, brothers, sisters and his mother, in flowing white scarf and tunic. She takes him into her arms.

Ajaz: that's my mother.

Mom: (SPEAKS IN PUNJABI) TRANSLATION: Ajaz helped me go to the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. He got his sister married, he got his brother married. He got this house made. He did all that work, all that good work.

Ajaz: They need thousand dollar, I send them. Twenty four hundred, I send them

N: Ajaz's sisters bring out bowls of spicy chicken and lamb. Nephews and nieces Ajaz has never seen climb in and out of his lap. He eats, drinks tea, turns his teeth red chewing Betel leaf -- and talks into the night.

Ajaz: So exciting, so exciting. My wife was telling me, when you gonna go, you gonna say, I'm not going to go nowhere, not going to leave my home. And I think she was right.

N: Ajaz's father died when he was 16. That's when he started dreaming of America.

Mom: (SPEAKS IN PUNJABI) TRANSLATION: His salary was only about 30 dollars a month. He was always saying, he'll go to America, America, earn money, earn money.

N: After Ajaz's success at the Yonkers gas station, he moved on to a 7-11 in Long Island. Where he says he paid taxes on part of his salary. Eventually, he became general manager of half a dozen fast food outlets in New York and New Jersey. Nadim Kirmani is the owner.

Nadim: The guy believed in work.

N: Ajaz was living in Paterson New Jersey, making around $30,000 a year, still sending money home and -- becoming more and more enamored of the American high life.

Ajaz: I was at that time bad guy, you know, flirting and everything, movies. And, uh, you can say it's hobbie, after year, I change my car. Camry, after year BMW, after year Mercedes. And when I got the new cars, the girls come to me. And then Nadim teach me, look, you stupid idiot, you doing that stuff? Just bring you wife here.

N: Technically Ajaz didn't have a wife. His marriage had been arranged by his family at a young age, so he was engaged to a Pakistani woman who was waiting back home in Lahore. In 1999, Nadim loaned Ajaz the money to get her a visitor's visa.

Ajaz: So I stay away from girls, and you know, stay away from new cars. And she come back and then everything was ok.

N: Until his arrest and detention last January.

Nadim: She's ready to deliver a baby without a husband who could hold her arm and cherish her while she's going through hardship. But unfortunately, it's not going to happen.

(LOUD RICKSHAW/TRAFFIC SOUNDS)

N: The streets in Lahore have no lanes - tiny cars and smoke-spewing rickshaws and bicycles and pedestrians compete for the tiniest openings in the road. It's Ajaz's first morning back in Pakistan, and while he and Pakistan have far bigger problems than traffic - this is the thing he can't get out of his head.

Ajaz: I was in states and they teach me everything. Don't cross the light, stop sign. I love that! In my country everybody driving without license!

Jilani: People in Pakistan have over the years lost their respect for the rule of law in their own country.

N: This is Hina Jilani in her office at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, overlooking the traffic. Jilani admits Pakistanis may export some of that sense of lawlessness. To get travel visas in Pakistan, people often pay thousands of dollars to agents who have mysterious ways of getting them. Ajaz says he paid more than 15,000 for his wife's visa. And to get his own back when he was 24, he says his wealthy boss put a chunk of money in his bank account and wrote a letter saying Ajaz was his son . The general sense is not that this is particularly illegal - it's just what you have to do to get what you need. So it's not surprising, Jilani says, that Pakistanis knowingly overstay visas in the U.S.

Jilani: But at the same time, these are not criminal activities. These are people who had no criminal records, and I don't think they deserve the treatment that they have. And I think the major issue here is treatment.

N: Aggressive interrogations, jail with criminal offenders, handcuffs - these are some of the elements she sees as disrespectful and abusive. And former INS commissioner Doris Meissner says that's worth worrying about.

Meissner: In today's world, what we do domestically with immigration policy has very strong and direct reverberations overseas and around the world.

N: Meissner is now with a think-tank called the Migration Policy Institute, and says the U.S. government must find a way to enforce immigration laws -- but it should begin with the newest arrivals.

Meissner: What that does is telegraph very clearly that this is new day, we're going to do things differently. But it does not go back into the groups of people that now are rooted in the community one way or another. Those people violated the law if they overstayed their visa, but the consequence of enforcing the law retrospectively is just much more disruptive.

N: An Immigration spokesman says if the bureau had the luxury of doing that, it would. But with intelligence reports suggesting there might be a significant number of visa violators in the country who want to harm us, the spokesman says there's been no choice but to enforce the law with regard to that group.

N: Ajaz spends much of his first full day back telling his story to a stream of relatives and friends who come sit in the family room and stare in disbelief. Ajaz's sister-in-law has her own newborn baby in her arms.

Sister-in-law: (SPEAKS IN URDU) TRANSLATION: They should have allowed him to stay there! Those who are there with no family, they could have been treated like that. But not a man with a family.

Said: I'm looking at him from childhood. He love us like an elder brother. But I don't know why he came back.

N: Said Naqui lives next door to Ajaz. His own brother immigrated to the United States too, and Said always planned to follow - until now.

Said: My elder brother suggest me that, please don't come here. If you want to make your future bright, stay in Pakistan.

Friend: Who's your President name? Clinton or Bush? McCune: Bush. Friend: George W. Bush, he's against Muslims, so I can't go to America.

N: That is the message traveling fast from the United States to the Pakistani streets - whether or not it is intended.

N: Ajaz visits his in-laws' house later in the day. They are wealthier than Ajaz's immediate family. They have a car, and a battery-run electric keyboard.

(Nephew sings a verse with electric piano: Heart says to heart, I love you )

N: While Ajaz visits with his father in law and nephews, the girls and women crowd into a bedroom to watch one cousin's elaborate engagement video. Photographs of Zile Huma pouting in lipstick and dark eye liner explode from a blooming flower or criss-cross the screen with colorful graphics. This is the home Ajaz's wife grew up in. Huma is one of her nieces.

Huma: She didn't want to go America. Now when she call us from America, she always weeping.

Huma is angry that Ajaz and other Pakistanis with families in the U.S. are being deported - especially while Pakistan is, in her eyes, bending over backwards to help the U.S. apprehend terrorists. Many political leaders in her own country aren't standing up to America to her satisfaction. These days, she supports the Islamic Fundamentalist party Jamaat y Islami.

Huma: I'm Muslim so I like Jamaat y Islami because they always want to help the Muslims, and against non Muslims.

Ahmad: Pakistan gave shoulder to America, yet Pakistan has been targeted.

N: Professor Khurshid Ahmad is the vice president of Jamaat y Islami. The way he tells it, U.S. immigration policy has Pakistanis in an uproar.

Ahmad: We are not going to score party points on these things. But I would like to convey message. America is losing its respect, its leadership role, its moral high position, in the eyes of Pakistan and in the eyes of people all over the worlds.

N: Leaders of other political parties say Jamaat y Islami is scoring party points on U.S. immigration policies.

N: In Lahore in the afternoon, boys play cricket and fly kites from the roofs of their houses. The horizon on all sides is studded with fluttering paper diamonds.

Ajaz: They are masters of these things.

N: Here on the roof built with money Ajaz sent from the States, he seems momentarily convinced he could stay here and make this his home. But by evening, he's agitated again, on the phone to his wife in NY.

Ajaz: She's a little upset because she say, why you so hating this country? I told her, I'm nothing, I'm a jobless. We have a big house, electricity and gas and a lot of things. They're happy now because I came here after 10 years. But might be after 1 months, they're going to say, Hello! Go outside and look job or something. Before they tell me something, I have to do something to go back! that's it!

N: A few miles away from Ajaz at another family home, Salim is having the same antsy feeling.

Salim: I'm not really happy at all, it's just killing me inside. It's my 3rd or 4th day since I've been back, I've been home. I haven't gone anywhere, I haven't called anybody. Because it's quite embarrassing in my culture to say you came back in this worse shape.

N: Salim's parents and sister and brother know what happened to him, but they haven't told other family members - they think he's just visiting.

Salim's father: I'm a father. So, so many people are saying you did wrong, you did right, you did this and that, what happened? It's a problem for us to answer everybody.

Salim: One of my mom's sisters from Karachi called me the second day I was here. She was like, how did you come back? And I was trying to tell her that, relax, you know, I came back to see family. And she was like, no you're lying. I'm like no I'm not lying, what do you mean? And she was like, I read your name in the paper. And I was quiet for like 10 minutes. What is worrying me is, my family is one of the really established families among our relatives. Who lived abroad, who had a good life. Over the phone I used to tell them stories about the life over there, how much fun I have over there, with my friends, with my social life. If I tell them jail, they go what? What did you do? That you went through a jail? Whoah, wow. They don't know whose mistake it is. All they know is, oh, you're a loser. And you eventually came back to your own country where you belong.

N: One of Salim's closest friends from high school comes by to see him.

Salim: Shahid!!!!!!!!!!! Nice to see you! Shahid: You haven't changed!

N: Shahid is in law school now. He's skinny, neat, and thrilled to see Salim.

N: Salim has organized a lunch at his house with Shahid and another Pakistani he was in jail with in New York - but he still hasn't told Shahid what happened to him. As Shahid listens to the other deportee tell of being held for months as a terror suspect - he says he was beaten by prison guards -- Shahid gets quieter and quieter and his eyes get wider and wider. Finally Salim explains that he himself spent several weeks in jail.

Shahid: I'm shocked. I'm really very much shocked. I've studied American Constitution. I loved America, as the champion of democracy, as the champion of fundamental rights. But suddenly when you hear that everything has been changed, that everything is going contradictory, it's really very much shocking.

N: When Ajaz was in prison in New Jersey, he says he had some long and interesting conversations with immigrants in jail for criminal offenses. He says once a prisoner from Jamaica told him Pakistanis must be stupid people.

Ajaz: He said, How many years you spend in United States. I said ten. He asked me, How much money you make? For example. I said, Ok, for example, $100,000. He said look, this country is for criminals. Not for innocent and hard workers. I say, why, why you telling me this. He said, I sell the drugs, I make $70,000 in two months. And you make $100,000 in ten years. They put me in the plane because I'm selling drugs; they deport me. You work ten years, you pay a little tax, and you have same punishment. So this country not for you. Because you innocent.

N: Ajaz is not innocent.

Meissner: He is still in violation and he should have and could have left when he was supposed to.

N: Former INS Commissioner Doris Meissner.

Meissner: You know his complaints are not totally credible.

N: But he is caught between a time when his guilt did not matter and the present, when it does. In New York, Ajaz's wife is due today to have their first child - Ajaz is barred from returning for 10 years. He thinks he can buy a visa to go to Montreal - but he doesn't even have his Pakistani passport. Immigration offials told him and many others they lost their passports. Salim has begun working in Lahore - to make pocket money while he and his wife pay thousands to try to fight his case in U.S. immigration courts. She has moved back in with her family in California. Salim's last e-mail closed with: Haven't touched my babe since mid Feb. Dying to kiss her. U can understand it. Going through a lot of emotional ups and downs, man.

For WNYC, I'm Marianne McCune

Resources

The American Prospect

Voice Of America News

INS info from YES Pakistan

Mix Engineer: Scott Strickland

Going Home in Handcuffs: Part 2

Going Home in Handcuffs: Part 3