Ameen’s fate in immigration judge’s hands after Sacramento man testifies at hearing
A U.S. immigration judge will decide in November whether Iraqi refugee Omar Ameen will stay in the United States or be deported three years after FBI agents arrested and accused the Sacramento-area man of being an ISIS terrorist.
A Nov. 16 hearing in Van Nuys will determine Ameen’s fate. The Iraqi immigrant remains in a detention facility in McFarland, Kern County, pending the ruling.
That’s where the 47-year-old Arden Arcade resident testified via video Wednesday afternoon and again Thursday morning at his deportation hearing, recounting the day in August 2018 that he testified would be “carved into my memory forever,” the day a joint FBI and Department of Homeland Security arrest team raided his second-floor apartment and took Ameen into custody as his wife and family looked on.
Former FBI Special Agent William Denton led the task force Aug. 15, 2018, and for hours interrogated the man U.S. officials say is a terrorist leader.
What Ameen said happened in those hours brought Ameen and Denton back before the federal immigration court on Thursday.
Ameen testified on Wednesday before his immigration lawyer Oakland attorney Siobhan Waldron and Thursday before U.S. attorneys that Denton threatened him and his family before and during his lengthy interrogation, agreeing with the agent to appease him and earn a trip back to Sacramento.
Ameen said he didn’t know if anything had happened to his family after he was arrested, and feared that his wife would be arrested or deported and his children abandoned. Ameen would tell attorneys that he perceived Denton’s assurances of their well-being as “undercover threats.”
“He didn’t ask me one question about (the officer’s killing). He was asking me specific questions and he wanted a specific answer,” Ameen said through an Arabic interpreter.
“If I didn’t agree, he would raise his hands, raise his voice and threaten my wife and children,” Ameen continued. “I started agreeing with everything he said to protect my wife and children.”
Ameen later said he was taken to a small hallway after his questioning where he said Denton again pressed him for answers.
“He told me, ‘I’m going to give you a last chance. I hope you can change your mind and I can help your family,’” Ameen testified.
“I was under threat of my family. I wanted to appease him,” he told Waldron at the end of her questioning Thursday morning. “I am in severe pain when I think about this because he’s using his power against women and children. That’s what hurts.”
Denton testified in September in the first detailed account of Ameen’s questioning. Denton said he assured Ameen his family would be safe, allowed him time for prayer and served him tea, a gesture, Denton testified, that “we thought was culturally sensitive in the Muslim world.”
But Ameen rejected that assertion in his testimony, saying he did not remember any efforts by agents to respect his culture, traditions or family.
On Thursday, Denton returned as government attorneys painted a different picture of Ameen’s interrogation, saying he answered Denton’s questions voluntarily and later asking the Sacramento-area man if he accepted offers of tea and water (yes); and whether he was physically harmed before or during the interview (no).
Attorneys also said Ameen refused a Halal-prepared meal before his interview, joking that he was on a diet; and lightheartedly boasted that he was once his hometown’s table tennis champion.
Denton in September testified that he was wearing a suit and was unarmed in the interview room. Ameen sat unshackled in the interview room and was provided with his Miranda rights to remain silent both verbally and in writing at the beginning of his questioning, he said.
Denton repeated that in brief testimony Thursday saying neither he nor other FBI agents threatened or promised anything to Ameen or his family and that Ameen signed his Miranda rights paperwork.
Earlier, Ameen told attorneys he was offered the chance to speak with a lawyer, but decided he didn’t need one.
“I thought I would explain everything simply about the death of the Iraqi police officer,” Ameen told immigration attorney Waldron on Thursday. “I was not present at the death of the Iraqi police officer, so I thought it would be an easy thing to explain.”
The FBI raid came after the Iraqi government sought Ameen’s extradition to face charges in the 2014 killing of a police officer in Ameen’s hometown of Rawah. A Sacramento federal magistrate judge in April ordered Ameen freed from Sacramento County custody, calling prosecutors’ arguments for his removal “dubious” and citing evidence from defense attorneys that Ameen was 600 miles away in Turkey — not Iraq — at the time of the officer’s killing.
Federal immigration officials nevertheless scooped up Ameen from the county lockup for the four-hour drive to the detention site near Bakersfield where he sat Thursday.
U.S. attorneys say Ameen lied on his refugee application documents about links to terrorist organizations, allegations that are part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
A federal immigration officer who interviewed Ameen before his entry into the United States testified Tuesday that he found that Ameen’s assertions that he had no ties to terrorism groups were credible.
Ameen’s attorneys have repeatedly said that he has no ties to terrorism groups and that, if returned to Iraq, Ameen would face certain death for a crime they say he did not commit.
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