Somalia refuses to admit refugee deported from Minnesota

Eric Black,  Star Tribune

Keyse Jama, the Somali whom the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has been trying to deport, was apparently rejected for admission to Somalia on Friday.

Late Friday, Jama, 26, was apparently in neighboring Kenya, with his future unclear.

Abdirizak Bihi of Minneapolis, a Somali interpreter and community organizer, translated a radio broadcast from the Somali language service of the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) that indicated that Jama and two men hired by the ICE to fly Jama from Kenya to the autonomous Somali state of Puntland had landed but had not been allowed to disembark.

Puntland officials said that they considered Jama's deportation illegal and that they would not accept him, said Bihi, who comes from Puntland and who spoke with government officials there.

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim of Minneapolis entered an order Friday prohibiting the ICE from deporting Jama in any way other than the one planned and accepted by the court.

The U.S government has been trying to deport Jama for more than four years. He entered the country legally in 1996 and settled in Minnesota. He lost his refugee status after being convicted of a 1999 assault.

That began a long court battle, one that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, over whether the United States could deport someone to a country like Somalia that, since a 1991 civil war tore the country apart, hasn't had a functioning government able to accept deportees.

The Supreme Court decided in January that ICE could deport Jama, and the government has tried to honor Jama's request that he be delivered to Bossasso, a port city in Puntland where many members of Jama's clan live. But that has proven difficult.

In papers filed with Tunheim's court, the agency said it had contracted with an international security firm that had negotiated the right to land a chartered plane in Bossasso. ICE officials took Jama from Minnesota to Kenya, apparently on Wednesday night, and turned him over to the private firm. But when the charter landed in Bossasso, officials there would not allow him to remain, according to the BBC report.