CENTENNIAL — After a five-year battle, blind Palestinian refugee Zuhair Mahd arrived this morning at the new Colorado offices of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for a scheduled swearing-in ceremony to become a citizen.
“When something like this happens, we are all the winners,” Mahd said, “both the government and I, because it’s a question of doing the right thing.”
He emerged at 11:00 a.m. a U.S. citizen.
The computer whiz had battled the FBI and Homeland Security to rule on his stalled application for citizenship.
A decision earlier this month by Robert Mather, Denver district director of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services, ended a multi-sided struggle that exposed post-9/11 FBI background-check backlogs.
Mahd, 35, moved to the United States as a teenager with government help after facing difficulties in Jordan.
After his citizenship application stalled, Mahd in 2006 filed a lawsuit in federal court to try to force a decision.
Under federal rules, citizenship applicants who pass all tests, as Mahd did, are supposed to be approved or denied within 120 days.
In 2007, U.S. District Judge Walker Miller ruled in favor of Mahd, ordering the FBI and Homeland Security to rule on his application within 90 days.
That didn’t happen.
Last year, Mahd filed another lawsuit after enlisting the pro bono services of Denver attorney David Harston. In the end, U.S. Magistrate Michael Hegarty shuttled between rooms in Denver’s federal courthouse brokering a settlement.
Mahd had moved to Washington state, but he returned to Denver to be sworn in.
