Sen. Clinton joins to help immigrant

By SUSAN ELAN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: April 15, 2004)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has joined a growing number of high-profile politicians in calling on immigration officials to release a Pakistani pizza deliveryman detained in a federal prison for more than two years in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Supporters of Ansar Mahmood, 26, an immigrant who lived and worked legally in Hudson, N.Y., said yesterday they expect Clinton's step to boost backing by members of Congress beyond New York.

The Journal News first reported on Mahmood's struggle to overcome a deportation order in September 2003.

"Senators from other states have voiced support privately but they wanted to wait until the New York state people got behind it," Nancy Rothman, a member of the Ansar Mahmood Defense Committee, said yesterday from her Columbia County home.

"The facts, as my constituents have relayed them, to me are disturbing," Clinton wrote Monday in a letter to Michael Garcia, assistant secretary of the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "He should be allowed to remain in the United States."

Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Charles Rangel, both New York Democrats, made earlier appeals to federal officials to grant Mahmood supervised release that would allow him to remain in the country. The initiatives followed the collection of more than 1,000 signatures on a petition requesting Mahmood's return to Hudson, where he has offers of employment and housing.

Mahmood, who came to the United States legally in April 2000 after winning an immigration lottery, worked up to 14 hours a day as a pizza deliveryman and earned enough to move his parents and younger sisters in Pakistan out of poverty.

His troubles began in October 2001, when he was arrested at the Hudson reservoir after asking a security guard to snap his photo against a backdrop of brilliant fall foliage. Mahmood was quickly cleared of suspicions of tampering with the water supply, but a police search of his home revealed that he had co-signed an apartment lease and registered a car for Pakistani friends.

Although Mahmood said he did not know the couple had overstayed their tourist visas, he followed his public defender's advice anyway and pleaded guilty in the hopes that the court would show him sympathy. However, a sentence of five years' probation on the charge of "harboring aliens" made him subject to deportation under immigration law.

Mahmood, detained at the Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, N.Y., since February 2002, recently abandoned his court battle against deportation and pinned his hopes on supervised release back to Hudson instead.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman William Strassberger said yesterday it would take a full pardon or a bill sponsored by a member of Congress on Mahmood's behalf to restore the status he had prior to his conviction. Without that, Mahmood would not be permitted to return to the United States if he decided to visit his family in Pakistan, Strassberger said.

Changes made to immigration law in 1996 limited the discretion immigration judges had to allow permanent residents to remain in the country if they broke the law or pleaded guilty, Strassberger said.

But Rothman said efforts to help Mahmood to remain in the country have been well worth it. "When he came here, he could have lived the good life but he chose to work as much as he could and send money home to help his family," she said. "He has been dealt such a tremendous injustice."

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