Alexandria, LA – Despite heroic efforts by Ohio immigration attorneys to stop the U.S. government from disappearing Mory Keita, we are devastated to report that he has, in fact, been deported.
The Cincinnati Enquirer writes:
Keita’s attorneys, Charleston Wang and Nazly Mamedova, filed an emergency request to stop the deportation. But Keita was already mid-flight when a federal judge in Cincinnati issued an order Tuesday, saying he should remain in the U.S. pending his testimony. The order said if the plane stopped in the U.S., Keita was “to be removed from the flight.”
ICE knew about the case the same morning Mr. Keita was put on a plane, and the judge’s order to stop the deportation was issued while the plane was in flight. To comply with the order, ICE agents could have kept Mr. Keita on the U.S.-owned plane, which is under the court’s jurisdiction, and brought him back to the United States. Instead, they dropped him off in a country he hasn’t seen since he was three, with no money, phone, or documents.
Mory believes his life is in danger. Ohio Immigrant Alliance will not confirm his current location. What we can tell you is that he and another man were extorted immediately upon leaving the airport after their deportation. Mory was able to borrow a phone and I spoke to him. yesterday. This is what he said:
When we got to Guinea it was a little bit dark and we got pulled over, there were a whole bunch of teenagers with guns and they were asking for everybody’s papers. I didn’t have a document, I tried to tell them, but they had guns and I was scared. They were speaking in French, I don’t speak French. I was very scared about what they were going to do. I was thinking about all I went through before and my life passed through my eyes.
The teenagers with the guns, they kept asking a whole bunch of questions and said they were going to take us somewhere but the guy I was with, it’s a guy I got deported with, he and his family members who were driving us paid them a whole bunch of money so they could let us go.
I think they were trying to kidnap us and get some money because they think that we just came from the United States and we have some kind of money. But I don’t have any money. When ICE dropped me off they didn’t give me anything. They didn’t even give me a penny. No ID, nothing.
In this audio clip, Mory describes what it’s like to be left in a country you do not know, with nothing, after 24 hours in full body shackles. The way ICE treats people is sub-human. He said: “Some of them they got kids, we got kids too!”
Mory’s deportation is relevant to a civil rights lawsuit against the Butler County Jail, an ICE detention facility, filed by two other African immigrants from Ohio. Bayong Brown Bayong and Ahmed Adem were subjected to multiple violent assaults and other incidents of racism and Islamophobia inside this county jail. Mory is one of the key witnesses to these incidents, which formed the basis of a 1983 complaint filed earlier this month. Of course ICE wanted to rush him out of the country to silence him and prevent justice from being served.
“Mory bravely spoke up, and ICE cowardly deported him,” said Lynn Tramonte, Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “This is in no way acceptable or just. Let this be a warning to ICE — your days of lawlessness, abuse, unaccountability, and cruelty are numbered.
“You took a dad away from his kid. You took a witness away from enforcing justice. But you did not take Mory’s spirit, and you did not win converts to your warped and racist views. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. U.S. Americans are tired of these abuses being carried out in our name, with our tax dollars. Change is coming, very soon.”
If you want to help Mory, email admin@ohioimmigrant.org
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