March 25, 2002	Monday	Muharram 10, 1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

WASHINGTON, March 24: How immigrants living in the United States can no longer take for granted that minor infarctions of law will be overlooked or that the possession even of a green card will provide security is underlined again by the case of a Pakistani now awaiting deportation.

Ansar Mahmood, 24, worked in a pizza parlour, in Hudson, New York state, when on Oct 9 last year, he decided to go a hill that he was told by a customer was the town’s highest point. He wanted to have a picture taken of himself to send to his family in Pakistan.

Unfortunately for Mahmood, according to a detailed story in Sunday’s Washington Post, the hilltop overlooked the town’s main water plant. He asked one of the guards at a post on the hill to take his picture. The guard obliged, but a second guard phoned the police. Those were the days when the anthrax scare was at its height, and it was suspected that terrorists might try to poison water supplies.

Police came to Mahmood’s house and he was asked why he was taking pictures of the water plant. Investigations led to the discovery that Mahmood had helped a Pakistani family rent a house and paid for the first month’s rent and car insurance. The family to which Mahmood gave shelter was apparently undocumented, and the young man was detained for harbouring illegal immigrants. This was a charge that, The Post points out, was almost exclusively invoked against smugglers at border points before Sept 11.

Mahmood had been lucky in a visa lottery and held a green card, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service has now moved to have his card revoked. He is being held at Buffalo Federal Detention Facility, and has filed an appeal against his deportation. But he fears he might run out of money to fight his case and will be deported.

Some 1,200 immigrants were picked up after the Sept 11 attacks, and all but a small number have been cleared.