Illegal Immigrants Face Bleak Prospect of Deportation
Hundreds of undocumented immigrants are losing sleep now that President Donald Trump is making good on his campaign promise to repatriate them from American soil. One of those who dreads this prospect is 55-year-old Nahidh Shaou, a native of Iraq.
Despite his service record in the U.S. Army, Shaou is a candidate for deportation due to spending decades in prison after shooting a police officer. The problem is that after spending most of his life in America, he has no place or family to go home to in Iraq, PJ Media reported.
Shaou's family immigrated to the United States in 1967 when he was 5. He tried to gain citizenship when he enlisted in the army in 1980 at age 17. But the process took time and was put on hold when he was deployed to South Korea for six months at which time his father died.
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Shaou was honorably discharged for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When he came home, he was left to care for his breast cancer-stricken mother and seven younger sisters. There was little help for veterans suffering from PTSD that time which led him to rob a McDonald's restaurant in 1983 when he was 20.
During the incident, he shot the sheriff's deputy of Oakland County for which he pleaded guilty to two armed robberies as well as shooting and wounding a police officer. His immigration papers were never processed. After spending 33 and a half years in prison, Shaou is supposed to be free but remains in detention pending his deportation.
Shaou's lawyer Rich Kent is fighting against his client's repatriation to Iraq where Christians are being slaughtered.
"If this is simply about his character and background then we've lost," he said. "But this is about the conditions we are sending people back to. We are imposing a death penalty through the backdoor."
