Agents beat right at the airport: immigrant from Uzbekistan sues ICE

This was not the first attempt to deport an immigrant from Uzbekistan. On September 22, despite the fact that the man was diagnosed with COVID-19, he was deported. The details are shared by the publication Gothamist.

"I never hugged my dad"

The first attempt to deport Bakhodir Madjitov, an Uzbek citizen and father of three US citizens, was made in 2019. Officials of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE), according to the claim of the victim, beat him at John F. Kennedy International Airport for refusing to leave America, citing a court decision blocking his deportation.

On September 21, 2020, three days after the lawsuit was filed and the details of the detention emerged, ICE officers again began deporting Madzhitov.

His lawyer, Ahmed Mohamed of the New York branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), said that Majitov was flown to Uzbekistan around midnight on Tuesday 22 September.

“Bahodir should be with his family and hold his youngest son here in America,” Mohamed said. “Instead, he is deported thousands of miles from his wife and children. No family should be subjected to such torture. This is another shameful spot in American history. "

In recent months, Majitov was in a detention center for illegal immigrants, where, according to his family members, he contracted the coronavirus.

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The 2019 airport beatings caught public attention, according to a civil rights infringement lawsuit filed by CAIR and the New Haven Legal Aid Association. Madzhitov had to be taken to the emergency room for injury treatment before being returned to the immigration detention center.

In recent days, as the story of the beating has surfaced, efforts to deport Madzhitov have intensified, despite persisting COVID-19 difficulties. On Monday, September 21, the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an urgent motion by his lawyers to suspend the deportation.

Activists staged a rally on Monday afternoon in Federal Plaza to draw attention to the Uzbek case. Madzhitov's youngest child, born during his father's detention at ICE, held a poster that read: "I never hugged my dad."

An ICE spokesman said he would not comment on the beating charges as the lawsuit is still pending. The agency also did not respond to the request for Madzhitov's deportation.

Who is Bahodir Madzhitov

Madzhitov came to the United States in 2006 to participate in a music festival of traditional Uzbek music. He expired his visa and stayed in the country illegally. Soon he married an American woman, Madina Mamadzhonova, they now have three children.

He had no criminal record. The couple and their children lived in Connecticut. Madzhitov claims that he was tortured in Uzbekistan because of the alleged connection of a deceased relative with a jihadist group. However, his asylum application was rejected. Since December 2017, Bahodir has been held in ICE custody at the Etova County Jail, Alabama.

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On June 10, 2019, ICE made the first attempt to deport Madzhitov. His lawyers say their client asked agents to look at court records showing that the US District Court for the Third Circuit suspended his deportation. Instead, the agents gave him false information that the applications had been rejected. When he refused to get on the plane, he was pushed in the back and stunned, the lawsuit said.

Majitov has "head and spine trauma, as well as devastating mental and emotional trauma" from the airport attack, according to the lawsuit.

It is worth noting that the detention center in Etova district, where Majitov was located, infamous among immigration lawyers... It is believed that this institution contains people whose deportation ICE wants to postpone for a long time. Almost all of the prisoners here are immigrants from Africa and Asia. 90% of them have families in the United States, and therefore continue to fight for the chance to stay in this country.