Pleas that Trump deport Iraqi Christians to safer country go unmet

Long before Jimmy Aldaoud died in Baghdad, an activist trying to stop President Donald Trump from deporting Christians like Aldaoud to Iraq hit on an idea: What if the U.S. could deport them to a different, safer country?

Steve Oshana raised the suggestion with several people in the Trump administration, pointing out that Christians face discrimination and persecution in Iraq. He offered up his preferred alternative: Christian-majority Armenia, whose officials had signaled to him they’d be willing to consider taking the deportees.

But the idea got nowhere, even though he ran it by White House advisers, State Department officials and figures in the Department of Homeland Security. Oshana was still pushing the option when word came earlier this month that Aldaoud had died. The 41-year-old Michigan resident had been sent to Iraq in June despite speaking no Arabic and having spent nearly his entire life in the United States. He is thought to have died because he couldn’t get the insulin he needed for his diabetes.

“I feel so guilty about what happened to Jimmy,” said Oshana, executive director of the Christian advocacy group A Demand for Action. “I don’t know if we could have done anything more looking back at all this, but it’s hard not to kick yourself wondering if anything else was possible.”

Oshana’s experience offers a glimpse into Trump’s hard-line stance on deportations — people who in the past were deemed relatively low priorities to deport are being removed from the U.S. It also reveals how hard it is for even well-connected advocates to navigate the system amid the crackdown.

Oshana still wants the Trump administration to consider the third-country option for the hundreds of other Christians in the U.S. facing deportation to Iraq. He expects it will be a struggle.

“The biggest impediment is the administration not making the request to another country and not even being willing to discuss it with us in a meaningful way,” Oshana said. “When we make an inquiry, it goes nowhere.”

The State Department and the White House would not say whether the administration was or has ever seriously considered the third-country option for Iraqi nationals facing deportation. They referred requests for comment on this report to the Department of Homeland Security.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS division that carries out deportations, did not directly answer a question about the third-country option. It noted in a statement that “federal immigration law provides robust procedures for aliens to challenge their removal from the United States before an immigration judge.”

Emails, texts and other documents seen by POLITICO show Oshana reached out to several Trump administration officials in 2017 to discuss the third-country idea. "I would love to speak with you about this," Oshana wrote to one official. "Their deportation appears to be imminent and I want to make sure they are not dumped in Baghdad where they are almost certainly going to be harmed."

Within the White House, Oshana approached Garry Hall, then a senior National Security Council official, and Victoria Coates, another NSC official who now deals with Middle East issues. He also spoke to Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE official, according to notes from the session. None would offer comment for this report. Oshana said he also raised the idea to administration officials focused on religious freedom issues, hoping they’d lend a sympathetic ear.

In June 2017, Oshana and fellow activists scored a meeting with NSC officials, including Hall, and they used the get-together to bring up the third-country option.

Oshana said he also had been discussing the possibility with various officials from Armenia at the time. The country, which has a population of around 3 million people, is relatively poor, but it has a history of accepting vulnerable Christian refugees.

The Armenians did not rule out the idea, Oshana said. But they noted that diplomatic protocol required that the United States first raise the topic with them. Oshana isn’t sure whether the Trump administration ever approached Armenia — or any other country — about accepting the deportees. A former White House official said the suggestion didn’t go past that June 2017 meeting — at least not in the NSC.

In 2018, Oshana temporarily laid aside the third-country idea as he and other activists focused on pursuing legal challenges to the deportations. The court cases largely halted the deportations that year.

But in April, a federal court effectively gave the go-ahead on the deportations, and within weeks it became clear the administration would carry them out. Oshana began asking around again about the third-country option. In mid-June, he sent an email to the White House asking for another meeting on the topic. He said he never heard back.

By that point, Aldaoud had already been deported to Iraq — ICE removed him from the U.S. in early June without letting him contact his family.

ICE dropped him in Najaf, a Shiite Muslim stronghold in Iraq with few Christians. Aldaoud made his way to Baghdad, but he was in physical and mental distress, supporters said.

U.S. officials previously stressed that Aldaoud was deported because of his criminal record, which includes convictions for assault with a dangerous weapon, domestic violence, theft of personal property, and breaking and entering.

Aldaoud’s supporters argued he had mental health issues that might have contributed to his criminal record and which also often left him homeless in the U.S. None of his crimes justified a deportation to Iraq, they insisted.

Like many Christians who have faced or are facing deportation, many of whom also have criminal records, Aldaoud never obtained U.S. citizenship. He is believed to have been born in Greece to Iraqi refugees who came to the U.S. while he was a baby. He grew up in the Detroit area.

It’s unclear whether U.S. officials considered sending Aldaoud to Greece. But he didn’t have Greek citizenship, and Athens would likely not have taken him.

At least 16 Iraqi nationals have been deported since the April court decision, legal advocates say. The overall number of people deported to Iraq since Trump took office — non-Christians included — is believed to be more than 100.

Iraq for many years refused to accept Iraqi nationals facing deportation from the U.S. Past presidential administrations also hesitated to repatriate the people involved given the dangerous conditions in the Middle Eastern country, which the U.S. invaded in 2003.

The Trump administration told Iraq that it had to accept the deportees if it didn’t want to be one of the countries subject to the president’s 2017 travel ban, which would have barred most Iraqis from entering the United States. Iraq reluctantly agreed.

Sending a deportee to a country other than that of his or her national origin is not standard practice for the United States, but it’s not without precedent. The move depends heavily on whether a third country can be found to accept the person.

Though not a direct parallel, the cases of Uighur Muslim detainees held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay offer one example.

Nearly two dozen Uighurs were held for years, even after judges determined they were not a threat to the United States. Yet sending them back to their homeland, China, was not an option because of Beijing’s widely reported oppression of the Uighur Muslim community. As the years went on, the U.S. managed to persuade several other places — including Albania, Bermuda and Switzerland — to take the Uighurs.

Armenian government officials either did not respond to requests for comment about Aldaoud’s case or said they did not know whether U.S. officials had been in touch about taking deportees. One official said that while Armenia typically accepts only Armenian citizens as deportees, taking in noncitizens would be a “political” decision made at higher levels.

Nadine Yousif Kalasho, an attorney who represents Iraqi nationals targeted for deportation, said the third-country option has always been a back-up possibility for clients who lose their court fights. Several of the would-be deportees are open to the idea, she said.

“If they could pick any other country where the conditions were a little better, I think that they could choose it,” Kalasho said, adding that she’d thought about finding a way to get Aldaoud to a third country even after he was already dropped off in Iraq.

Another option activists have floated is persuading the U.S. to send the Christian deportees to Erbil, a city in the Kurdish region of Iraq that is considered safer for them.

The Kurdish Regional Government's representative in Washington, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, said no U.S. officials have approached her office about that idea and that she is unaware of any U.S. representatives talking to other Iraqi Kurdish leaders about it.

She did not rule out the proposal but said it would require Kurdish authorities to talk to Washington and Baghdad and that it “would be a lengthy and complicated process.”

The deportation cases of Iraqi Christians have gotten significant notice because of that community's unique vulnerability. The Trump administration itself has declared that Christians in Iraq were the victims of the genocide at the hands of the Islamic State terrorist group. And in an odd political twist, many U.S. citizens of Iraqi Christian descent voted for Trump, citing his pledge to protect religious minorities.

But there are other religious and ethnic minorities in the U.S. facing potentially dangerous deportations to Iraq, including Kurds and Shiite Muslims.

Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) is spearheading legislative efforts to halt virtually all deportations to Iraq. When asked about the third-country option, Levin said that’s not a focus for him because his priority is to end the removals instead.

While Levin noted the obvious humanitarian issues involved, he also stressed fiscal arguments in hopes of persuading Trump to stop the deportations.

“It costs a lot of money to deport people,” he said. “Whether you’re going to Armenia, or Erbil or Baghdad or Najaf, this whole thing is a colossal waste of money.”

Levin said many of the people deported to Iraq are in dire straits, with some at risk of killing themselves. His office, meanwhile, is working with Iraqi authorities to bring back Aldaoud’s body for burial in the United States.

Ted Hesson contributed to this report.