If Barack Obama means what he says about righting the wrongs of the Bush years and fixing relations with Muslims, he might start with the case of Haroon Rashid.
The 37-year-old Pakistani was deported two years ago, leaving his American wife and four kids to live on welfare in Denver.
The family has spent years battling with a Justice Department that wrongly targeted them as terrorists, and with local prosecutors who hounded Rashid in the post- 9/11 era.
“Sometimes I feel like my brain is slipping,” says Rashid’s wife, Saima Saima, wiping her tears with her burka Thursday. “They don’t say it, but inside my kids miss their father. It’s in God’s hands, and I can’t do anything.”
Relief finally came late last week when Judge Christine Chauche ruled to lift the conviction that led to Rashid’s deportation. He still needs a nod from D.C. to re-enter the country.
“Enough is enough,” says his lawyer, Mark Burton. “Let this guy finally come home.”
Rashid immigrated legally in 1997, driving an airport shuttle to support his growing brood.
Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, he traveled to Pakistan to help his family with their business near the Afghan border.
A tip from an associate who claimed Rashid was a terrorist led agents to begin questioning him in 2002. Attorney General John Ashcroft cited the probe as a priority case after vowing to use every legal tool to detain possible terrorists.
Agents raided Rashid’s family in 2003.
“They put guns to our heads for like half an hour,” recalls 12-year-old son, Yusuf, who was 7 at the time.
Unable to build a terrorism case, agents held Rashid and his wife on charges related to a minor discrepancy on a relative’s immigration papers. Those charges ultimately were dismissed.
What facilitated his deportation was a scuffle Rashid had with a teenager who was milling around his brother-in- law’s Arapahoe County home in 2003. Both Rashid and the teen suffered minor scrapes in the incident, which Rashid took it upon himself to report to police.
A witness testified that Rashid, who had no criminal record, wasn’t the initial aggressor.
Former Arapahoe County DA Jim Peters pursued the misdemeanor case, assigning a senior prosecutor to argue against Rashid’s court-appointed rookie. Rashid’s public defender didn’t object to Judge Stephen Ruddick’s random musings to jurors about terrorist attacks. And she took no action when the court assigned Rashid a translator in Pashto rather than Urdu, the language he speaks.
A jury found Rashid guilty, and he was sentenced to more than a year behind bars on a third-degree-assault conviction for which offenders often get probation. That was just long enough to classify him under federal guidelines as an aggravated felon, conveniently allowing agents to deport him.
Rashid has stayed connected with his family for two years through long-distance phone calls. Never as a free man has he held his 4-year-old daughter, Khoulah, who was born during his confinement.
“I can’t put into words how hard this is,” says Saima, whose welfare checks stop this month.
Arapahoe County DA Carol Chambers’ office would not comment about whether, merely to keep Rashid out of the country, it will reprosecute a man who already has served his time for the minor punch-up.
Meantime, Denver’s Muslim community is raising money for an immigration lawyer to convince the feds to reunite a family snarled in the system at the wrong time in history.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or sgreene@denverpost.com.
