Man arrested by ICE after his wife writes Obama RE his green card application

[KittyPollitt 284]

Article from CNN- http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/06/21/new.york.obama.letter.immigration/index.html

New York (CNN) -- Not everyone expects a response when they write a letter to the president of the United States. But Caroline Jamieson got much more than she expected when her husband ended up in jail and afraid he would be deported.

Jamieson, vice president of marketing at a new-media advertising company, wrote President Barack Obama in January because her husband, Hervé Fonkou Takoulo, was facing deportation to his native Cameroon. Takoulo failed in a bid before political asylum almost a decade ago, and a judge issued a deportation order after they were married.

After he and Jamieson married on 2005, Takoulo applied for a green card based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen. But immigration law requires that the deportation order be lifted before the couple can appear before immigration officials to argue their case that the marriage is legitimate and not a ploy to legalize Takoulo's presence in the United States.

"We want to be given the chance to interview and prove that we are a married couple, so Hervé can get a green card, and that has proven extremely difficult to do," Jamieson told CNN.

They never received a direct response to the letter. But they did get two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers waiting outside their East Village, Manhattan apartment on June 3 when Takoulo was leaving the apartment to go to the gym.

Jamieson told CNN that the officers cornered her husband and asked him if he had written a letter to the president. "He said 'No, but my wife did.' And they explained that with that letter -- when it was brought to their attention -- that the Obama administration wanted them to resolve this quickly,'" Jamieson said.

Her husband was held at ICE headquarters for six hours, alone in a room, until he was chained at the wrists, around his stomach and his ankles and taken to the Hudson County Correctional Center in New Jersey, she said.

For the next two weeks, a frantic Jamieson wrote letters to politicians and anyone else who might be able to help. She got responses, she said, but none seemed to lead anywhere. Takoulo was allowed to call his wife once a day at designated times but he knew little about his situation. He spent his days with repeat sex offenders and men accused of felonies, fearing imminent deportation.

"I did everything I could and went into survival mode and pushed for all these connections to the press," she said. "We are fortunate to have that leverage. What about the people in the country who don't have access to those means?"

Then, on Thursday, he was brought to an immigration processing jail in Manhattan and released. There was no explanation offered for his release, but Takoulo is now wearing an electronic ankle monitor while his case is being reviewed.

ICE spokesman Brian P. Hale said the circumstances of Takoulo's arrest were undergoing an internal review and he was released as "an alternative to detention pending a review of his case."

Investigators are looking to determine whether "appropriate separation" between Jamieson's letter to the president and Takoulo's deportation case were violated. If so, he said, the case will go to the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general for "immediate and appropriate action."

Takoulo graduated from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with an engineering degree in 2008 and received several job interview offers after graduation. But the deportation order hung over his head and prevented any followup.

"All he wants to do is contribute to this economy," Jamieson told CNN. "We want to be a productive couple. He's been dying to work."

The couple has been following Barack Obama's rise in the political world since 2004.

"I felt a special kinship to him because I'm of mixed race, and my husband obviously has a similar background," Jamieson told CNN.

Regardless of whether or not her letter was mishandled, the incident has deeply affected the couple's faith in the Obama administration.

"I feel really confused, I don't understand how something like this is possible. I can't imagine that at the top of the Obama administration that they realize that something like this is happening," Jamieson told CNN.

[HeatDeath 430]

Human beings are tribal creatures. We feel a deep need, part of our basic psychological makeup, to place ourselves under the authority of a wise and powerful philosopher-king who knows us personally and loves us unconditionally. Most of the planet fills this need with actual tribal leadership (the natural method), gang membership (the modern urban equivalent), or religion. Obama rose to power by exploiting this powerful psychological need, causing/allowing American liberals to feel that he was their king and their friend.

Obama isn't God. He isn't the Messiah. He isn't even the wise and good philosopher-king.

He's just the president. Better than some. Worse than a bunch. Doing the standard, as-we've-come-to-expect, mediocre job, playing the political cards he was dealt by his equally mediocre, equally human predecessor.

People laboring under this bizarre concept - that Obama is their tribal chief and personal friend, based on nothing more than having seen him speak on TV - seem to have this idea that he could legislate away rainy days, if only the rest of the criminals in DC would just hold hands and believe.

"Feeling a kinship" to a politician who's limousine wouldn't move half a lane to avoid splashing you with gutter water on his way to a thousand dollar a plate luncheon is kind of sick, but it speaks of this desperate need people have to believe. Placing this kind of trust in any human being you aren't married to is always going to hurt, in the end. [some would ague that marriage isn't a whole lot safer, but at least there's a real chance there.] You can almost feel this poor woman's pain and bewilderment radiating off of her words on the screen - "How could Obama rat on me?", she seems to say. "He loves me! His press agent told me so!" It hurts to see this woman's feelings of hurt and betrayal, but it worries me more to know that she is far from uncommon - that an entire generation of American voters invested so much of themselves in the hope for "change they could believe in", that mass disillusionment is inevitable.

"Losing faith" in the Obama administration may in fact become a seminal event - the shared coming-of-age experience of an entire generation of liberal voters, just as losing faith in the Bush administration disillusioned enough Republican voters to A ) give the radically centrist McCain the nomination and B ) deny him any real chance of winning.

These two stunningly mediocre presidencies, back-to-back, and the disappointments they've engendered in the hearts of voters, conservative and liberal, who just wanted someone to believe in, are the true roots of the "tea-party" movement. What will happen to the two party system as more and more voters finally realize that they simply cannot trust the institutions as they stand, or the candidates they produce?

[Bobby+Umit 161]

He didn't follow the law and the law won - I see no issue here.

Did she think Obama would magically wave his wand and give her husband a GC?

Procedure must be followed. The ICE agents were following procedure. (there isn't enough info in the article to see the actual timeline of this case).

If he had followed the procedures, he would not be in this mess.

[jimnlena 8]

He didn't follow the law and the law won - I see no issue here.

Did she think Obama would magically wave his wand and give her husband a GC?

Procedure must be followed. The ICE agents were following procedure. (there isn't enough info in the article to see the actual timeline of this case).

If he had followed the procedures, he would not be in this mess.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Of course you have to wonder about the security of our mail.

[Noel194 53]

While it is not easy to follow the rules we must do it. I see no problem here. If the USA let everyone violate the immigration laws with no consequences no one would every follow them.

[Harsh_77 718]

I agree with most of the response, law is law. He broke the law and hence had to pay for the consequnce, most of us here have gone thru an ordeal before we get to be togeather with our spouse.

So why should there be a seprate quick resolution for this case? ICE agents were doing their job and there was nothing wrong in it (only part I agree that was bad was putting him the shackle and putting him with regular criminal) other then that he had a deportation order which he did not follow.

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

Let me see if I understand the chronology based on the article:

1. The guy, a native of Cameroon, applied for asylum a little less than 10 years ago (the article says "almost a decade").

2. The asylum application was denied.

3. At some point, removal proceedings were initiated.

4. In 2005, before the final decision was made on deportation, he married his current wife and applied for adjustment of status.

5. After the marriage, the immigration judge issued the final deportation order.

Ok, sounds like they weren't able to overcome the mandatory presumption that a marriage entered into after removal proceedings have been initiated is a sham for the purpose of evading immigration law.

6. USC wife writes a letter to President Obama asking for intervention.

7. ICE arrests alien, allegedly saying that the President had asked for their case to be resolved quickly.

It sounds like they got what they asked for. They wanted the President to intervene - he apparently did. The President apparently asked for the case to be resolved quickly. It looks like it was. What's the problem?

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

Human beings are tribal creatures. We feel a deep need, part of our basic psychological makeup, to place ourselves under the authority of a wise and powerful philosopher-king who knows us personally and loves us unconditionally. Most of the planet fills this need with actual tribal leadership (the natural method), gang membership (the modern urban equivalent), or religion. Obama rose to power by exploiting this powerful psychological need, causing/allowing American liberals to feel that he was their king and their friend.

Obama isn't God. He isn't the Messiah. He isn't even the wise and good philosopher-king.

He's just the president. Better than some. Worse than a bunch. Doing the standard, as-we've-come-to-expect, mediocre job, playing the political cards he was dealt by his equally mediocre, equally human predecessor.

People laboring under this bizarre concept - that Obama is their tribal chief and personal friend, based on nothing more than having seen him speak on TV - seem to have this idea that he could legislate away rainy days, if only the rest of the criminals in DC would just hold hands and believe.

"Feeling a kinship" to a politician who's limousine wouldn't move half a lane to avoid splashing you with gutter water on his way to a thousand dollar a plate luncheon is kind of sick, but it speaks of this desperate need people have to believe. Placing this kind of trust in any human being you aren't married to is always going to hurt, in the end. [some would ague that marriage isn't a whole lot safer, but at least there's a real chance there.] You can almost feel this poor woman's pain and bewilderment radiating off of her words on the screen - "How could Obama rat on me?", she seems to say. "He loves me! His press agent told me so!" It hurts to see this woman's feelings of hurt and betrayal, but it worries me more to know that she is far from uncommon - that an entire generation of American voters invested so much of themselves in the hope for "change they could believe in", that mass disillusionment is inevitable.

"Losing faith" in the Obama administration may in fact become a seminal event - the shared coming-of-age experience of an entire generation of liberal voters, just as losing faith in the Bush administration disillusioned enough Republican voters to A ) give the radically centrist McCain the nomination and B ) deny him any real chance of winning.

These two stunningly mediocre presidencies, back-to-back, and the disappointments they've engendered in the hearts of voters, conservative and liberal, who just wanted someone to believe in, are the true roots of the "tea-party" movement. What will happen to the two party system as more and more voters finally realize that they simply cannot trust the institutions as they stand, or the candidates they produce?

"Whose limousine."

That notwithstanding, one of the most brilliant posts I've EVER read on VJ.

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

Let me see if I understand the chronology based on the article:

1. The guy, a native of Cameroon, applied for asylum a little less than 10 years ago (the article says "almost a decade").

2. The asylum application was denied.

3. At some point, removal proceedings were initiated.

4. In 2005, before the final decision was made on deportation, he married his current wife and applied for adjustment of status.

5. After the marriage, the immigration judge issued the final deportation order.

Ok, sounds like they weren't able to overcome the mandatory presumption that a marriage entered into after removal proceedings have been initiated is a sham for the purpose of evading immigration law.

6. USC wife writes a letter to President Obama asking for intervention.

7. ICE arrests alien, allegedly saying that the President had asked for their case to be resolved quickly.

It sounds like they got what they asked for. They wanted the President to intervene - he apparently did. The President apparently asked for the case to be resolved quickly. It looks like it was. What's the problem?

Jim,

you do have a sense of humor after all. That's refreshing!

[Married2009 32]

Wasn't there something in the news (think it was about 2 years ago) about Obama's aunt facing deportation? The woman in the article may have been thinking about that, and believing it would cause Obama to be more sympathic to their situation.

Edited July 16, 2010 by Married2009