One of the points Donald Trump made repeatedly on the campaign trail is that other nations having been refusing to accept deportation of their citizens who have been convicted of felonies within the United States. His opponents have been claiming that such assertions are false. Having witnessed one such episode firsthand, I can confidently say that in this case, Trump is correct.
I served as an assistant United States attorney (federal prosecutor) for over 25 years before retiring in late 2015. The last twenty years of that career were spent in the Western District of Missouri, with my office in Kansas City. In 2005, I prosecuted a defendant named Abdul Asalati. Asalati was born in Afghanistan, had come to the United States at some point, and had never taken the steps to become an American citizen. In short, he was and remains a citizen of Afghanistan.
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Asalati pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to distribute almost half a kilogram of cocaine. At the time of his guilty plea in federal court, he had already collected arrests and adjudications for burglary and felony and misdemeanor theft. Believing that Asalati was to be deported to Afghanistan following the service of any prison term imposed, the judge issued a fairly light sentence for his offense: two years imprisonment to be followed by five years of supervised release (the equivalent of parole in state systems) if he was not deported.
But Asalati was not deported. He remained in the Kansas City area after his release from prison, and soon found himself back in federal court facing charges that he had violated the conditions of his supervised release. In July, 2009, I again prosecuted Asalati, this time for these violations, which included the aggravated assault of a U.S. Marine Corps officer. But for the grace of the almighty and excellent healthcare, that Marine might have been killed.
The Marine officer had taken a date to a night club. He escorted his date to the door of a bathroom in the building. When they knocked on the door, Asalati opened it, holding a nearly naked — and unconscious — woman. The Marine was concerned that he was witnessing a date rape, and he and Asalati had words. The Marine and his date were warned by another party that Asalati had friends in the building and was dangerous, so the Marine and his date attempted to leave.
They were met on the building’s fire escape by a gang of thugs led by Asalati. The gang beat the Marine officer senseless. He was hospitalized for two days, had to have eleven staples in his head, and was briefly comatose from the head injuries he suffered during the beating. Following the evidentiary hearing about the assault, the district judge — the same one who had imposed Asalati’s original sentence — determined that Asalati was guilty of violating the terms of his supervision.
Before announcing a new sentence, however, the judge required that an immigration officer come to the courtroom. The judge asked why Asalati had not been returned to Afghanistan, and was told by the immigration official that the defendant could not be deported because the United States government could not produce Asalati’s birth certificate, proving that he had been born in Afghanistan.
The position taken by our State Department and immigration authorities in this case is nothing short of absurd. Of all the nations on the globe, it is hard to conceive of another nation over which our government could — if it so desired — have exerted more leverage than Afghanistan. It was the American military and American aid that had liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban, and American power that was keeping the Afghan government afloat. For our own government to accept the Afghan position that the United States was responsible for providing Asalati’s birth certificate to his home country was a fact that did not sit well with Asalati’s American judge.
As a consequence of his brutal assault on the Marine officer, Asalati was sentenced to another two years in prison, and to a following term of supervised release for life, with conditions of that supervision including a 10:00 p.m. curfew and prohibition against consumption of alcohol, again, for life. I had the impression at the time that the judge — in imposing such conditions — was trying to persuade Asalati to deport himself.
Perhaps the Afghan government tried to find, but could not locate, Asalati’s birth certificate. Perhaps it never existed. Who knows what the record-keeping practices of that government were at the time of Asalati’s birth. The fact remains that Asalati’s immigration records in this country showed that he immigrated from Afghanistan, and that our diplomats meekly accepted the Afghani refusal to take their criminal back.
Our statutes require the deportation of those aliens — illegal or otherwise — who are convicted of aggravated felonies, and Asalati’s drug trafficking and assault fit that bill. An additional prerequisite for the enforcement of our statute remains, however, a federal government with the determination and intelligence to enforce its laws. That condition — like those of Asalati’s supervision — was never met.
Charles Ambrose is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, a former USAF JAG officer and served for 25 years as an assistant united states attorney in the District of Columbia and in the Western District of Missouri. He is the author of a series of contemporary, historical, crime novels under his pen name, Marc Rainer. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
