Student tells of ordeal with immigration agents (The Capital Times)

Student tells of ordeal with immigration agents
ICE stalled, then brought out the bags

Pat Schneider — 4/04/2008 10:55 am

Tope Awe said she thought her interview at the Department of Homeland Security office in Milwaukee last week was dragging on a bit too long. And then, the University of Wisconsin-Madison student recalled, in came the plastic bags.
"As soon as I saw the plastic bags, I realized what was happening," Awe recalled in an interview. Immigration agents suddenly entered the interview room carrying the bags to collect personal belongings from her and her brother, Benga Awe. "I don't even know how to describe it. I had no idea what to do," said the 22-year-old Pharmacy School student, who remembered breaking down in tears.
On Thursday, Awe was back at school, trying to catch up on her missed classes after being released two days earlier from the Dodge County Jail, where she and her brother were detained on an immigration hold. They were fitted with monitoring ankle bracelets and ordered to report periodically to Immigration and Customs Enforcement while awaiting travel documents for their return to their native Nigeria.
Brother and sister came to the United States as children with their family in 1989. They say it was not clear to them that a failed attempt in 2003 to secure political asylum by their father, Samuel Awe, a UW Ph.D. who was once the Nigerian secretary of agriculture, meant that they had to leave the country where they had grown up.
Both say they are hiring lawyers to plead their cases. A defense fund for Tope Awe has been set up at the School of Pharmacy.
Five days in custody was an ordeal for Awe, a leader in the campus community whose arrest set off a wave of protest from fellow students. It was the outpouring of support that sustained her in custody and that has changed her forever, she says.
"I am overwhelmed with gratitude for everything everyone has been doing -- friends, faculty, staff, people I've never met," Awe said. "The outpouring of love and support my brother and I received, I can't say enough about it."
Dressed in a business suit and heels for the ICE interview, Awe recalled being surprised when her ankles and wrists were shackled, her hands tethered to her waist, as she was taken into custody. It was, she said, like something out of a movie.
"I thought, there is no need for this. We came in voluntarily the first time you asked," she recalled. "But I guess protocol is protocol."
She and her brother were taken by van to the Dodge County Jail, with contracts with ICE to hold immigration detainees.
Tope Awe, a high school athlete described by UW students who rallied in her support as an accomplished student dedicated to making the campus more welcoming to students of color, found herself in the unlikely circumstance of being in jail.
After booking and the humiliating experience of a strip search, Tope said, she kept to herself in her cell the first day, acclimating herself to such indignities as a toilet right next to the bed.
"But being in that small room 24 hours a day was not the best thing for me," Awe said. The next day, she ventured out into the common area for the 16-cell pod where she was placed. She spent the days watching television, eating and reading with the other women, who included some on immigration holds and others on criminal charges.
Just as rumors of a pending hearing on her status spread among her supporters in Madison, Awe too expected to appear in court.
ICE says that's not going to happen.
"The Awe family has had multiple opportunities to have their case heard in immigration court," ICE said in a statement. "Their case and all their appeals have been repeatedly denied."
A stay of deportation granted because of Samuel Awe's health problems expired in 2004, according to ICE. When the Awes failed to contact ICE, they became immigration fugitives with outstanding orders of deportation.
Awe said she does not know why she was suddenly released.
Benga Awe, 24, said in an interview that he tried to apply for permanent residency after his marriage to Wisconsin native Jessica Ruffalo, whom he met as a student at UW-Stevens Point. His case was not processed because of the outstanding deportation order. But he will keep trying to get approval to stay with his wife and 16-month-old son, he said.
Tope Awe said she hoped at least to able to return Pharmacy School next year to complete her fourth and final year.
"I invested personal time and the school provided education, and it would be a shame to waste that," she said. Besides, the U.S. is facing a shortage of pharmacists and she is eager to enter the workforce and be part of the solution to that problem.
She said she is grateful for the support and is trying to stay optimistic. "A lot of people in this situation are taken and they're forgotten," she said.
Pat Schneider — 4/04/2008 10:55 am