Omar Ameen’s attorneys say judge has rejected efforts to return Sacramento man to Iraq

Iraqi refugee Omar Ameen has won a ruling from a federal immigration judge that bars the government from sending him back to Iraq because of the possibility he could face torture there, but the Sacramento resident’s legal fight is continuing after nearly four years in custody.

Ameen’s immigration lawyers said Monday that an immigration judge ruled against the federal government’s efforts to have him sent back to Iraq “because of the likelihood that he will be tortured upon return,” a victory that comes after an April 2021 ruling by a federal magistrate judge in Sacramento who ruled against the government’s efforts to extradite him and ordered his immediate release.

Instead of walking out of the Sacramento County Main Jail, where he had been held since his August 2018 arrest, Amen was taken into federal immigration custody and driven to a Southern California holding facility to face proceedings to have him removed from the United States for allegedly lying about his past when he sought entry to the United States.

Ameen originally was facing extradition to face trial in the 2014 slaying of an Iraqi police officer, and federal prosecutors argued he was an ISIS terror leader.

His federal defenders in Sacramento argued that Ameen was in Turkey at the time of the slaying and had no ties to terror groups, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Edmund F. Brennan concluded that the government’s evidence that Ameen was involved in the slaying of Officer Ihsan Abdulhafiz Jasim was “dubious.”

Despite that, federal authorities continued efforts to deport Ameen, and last November an immigration judge found that he had lied on his entry forms and could be deported but said the government had not proven its claims that Ameen participated in terrorist activities.

The government has maintained that Ameen had ties to terror, but his lawyers say the latest ruling rejected those arguments.

“We are thrilled that the Immigration Judge found what we have been arguing all along—that the government does not have reliable evidence that Mr. Ameen has had any involvement in terrorism,” attorney Ilyce Shugall of Oakland-based Immigrant Legal Defense said in a statement. “We are also glad that she made the right decision to grant him protection so that he can remain in the United States safely.

“We will continue to pursue his immediate release from custody.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento had no immediate comment Monday morning.

Shugall has been fighting the case along with her colleague Siobhan Waldron, Nicole Hallett of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School and Rachelle Barbour, one of Ameen’s Sacramento federal defenders who fought his extradition for more than two years in Sacramento courtrooms.

“The federal government’s baseless targeting of Mr. Ameen to pursue a political agenda in its War on Terror has always been unacceptable,” Waldron said in a statement. “The Immigration Judge’s findings make it clear that Mr. Ameen’s continued detention in the name of national security is unwarranted and unjustifiable.”

Ameen has a pending case in federal district court in San Francisco seeking his release, with his next hearing scheduled for April 13.

This story was originally published March 28, 2022 at 8:11 AM.