Abdoulaye Cherif was asleep when his phone rang that morning, and he answered only because the display showed the call was coming from a prison.
He was shocked to hear the voice of his father, who was supposed to be at work, driving for Uber.
Mamadou Fadel Cherif told his son he had been arrested by ICE as he left the family home in West Oak Lane. He said he needed his son to break the news to his mother, because she would be devastated to hear it over the phone.
Cherif, 21, called his mom at work and told her she needed to come home.
Now, two weeks after that July 13 morning, “we’re all scrambling,” Cherif said in an interview. “A piece of us is missing.”
Fadel Cherif, 56, never expected to be arrested by ICE. He lives legally in the United States, having been granted Withholding of Removal almost 20 years ago.
That status allows him to stay and work, and bars the government from deporting him to his homeland, the West Africa nation of Guinea, where the U.S. government agrees he could be harmed or killed over politics.
His status, however, does not shield him from being sent to a third country, if ICE can find a nation willing to accept him.
Those kinds of third-country deportations are difficult for the agency to achieve. But recent ICE guidance tells agents that when immigrants with Withholding of Removal or Convention Against Torture protections report for check-ins, officers should consider the viability of their removal and if they should be detained in the meantime.
Advocacy groups and immigration lawyers say the Trump administration is increasingly arresting and detaining migrants who have been granted withholding, keeping them in custody while it pursues removal to a third country. Last year, an Iranian immigrant who had fled the regime spent nearly six months in detention before a federal judge ordered his release.
Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who did not initially respond to queries, said Tuesday that they were working on a response to questions about the case.
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Philadelphia immigration attorney Ricky Palladino, who represents Fadel Cherif, said there is no reason for ICE to detain him. He has no criminal record. He has legal authorization to work, a Social Security number, and a driver’s license.
Palladino filed a petition in federal court that seeks Fadel Cherif’s immediate release, arguing that he has been denied due process under the law.
In nearly 20 years, the filing says, no government official has suggested that Fadel Cherif’s deportation was “even remotely likely.” And it says that ICE can return someone with his status to custody only if, on account of changed circumstances, the agency finds “a significant likelihood that the alien may be removed in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
Palladino said in an interview that Fadel Cherif is the main support for his wife, who has legal permanent residency, also known as a green card, and for their four American-born sons, including Abdoulaye, a Marines reservist.
In Guinea, a nation of 12 million people that is roughly twice the size of Pennsylvania, Fadel Cherif was jailed by the government after protesting the results of his country’s 1998 presidential election, which was marred by irregularities. He later fled in fear of being rearrested, using a document that showed a different Guinean identity to enter the United States in New York in November 2003.
For years he has worked in dining services at La Salle College High School, the private Catholic boys school in Montgomery County, and also drives for Uber.
Matt Beck, director of dining services for CulinArt at the school, was upset to learn of the arrest, describing Fadel Cherif as an extremely hard worker.
“He’s a good guy,” Beck said. “The students here love him. And so does the staff.”
Fadel Cherif’s detention comes as ICE is arresting record numbers of immigrants. In one five-day span this month, the agency detained more than 10,000 people across the country, the New York Times reported.
The rate of ICE arrests topped 1,300 a day in June ― and grew again to a record 1,474 a day during the first 11 days of July, Syracuse University professor and immigration-data analyst Austin Kocher reported last week.
“ICE has been touting record high arrest numbers this summer ― and they are not wrong,” Kocher wrote in an analysis.
The ICE directive issued shortly after President Donald Trump took office meant that people with Withholding of Removal could be detained, noted the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., even if they had no criminal record and had been reporting to ICE for years without incident.
“Given the increased pressure that ICE has been under to meet quotas for arrests, detentions, and deportations,” the network wrote, “it is not surprising that the agency is focused on those who already have removal orders as being easy targets.”
Fadel Cherif was denied asylum when he could not prove that he had filed within a year of entering the United States.
To receive Withholding of Removal, applicants must prove that they were persecuted in the past or that their lives would be threatened in the future, that the government harmed or will harm them ― or failed to control others who might do so. And they must show that moving to a different part of their country would not provide safety.
Withholding offers fewer benefits than asylum, which includes a path to citizenship and allows people to seek to have their spouses and children join them in the United States.
When Withholding of Removal is granted, the immigration judge also enters a deportation order, then tells the government it cannot deport the person to their homeland. In that way the removal is “withheld.”
People with that status cannot leave the United States without triggering deportation, have no path to citizenship, and cannot petition to bring family members to this country.
While the U.S. government may try, deporting people with withholding to a third country is difficult to accomplish. Nations that willingly accept their own citizens can be disinclined to accept other foreign nationals.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates that during its first year back in office, the Trump administration carried out about 15,000 removals to third countries, a fraction of the total 396,000 deportations.
Deportations of those who have Withholding of Removal are even more rare, according to the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights in Washington. The center says it is pointless to detain those people while attempting to deport them. If ICE were to release a foreign national and later identify an appropriate third nation, it could simply detain them again.
Fadel Cherif remains in custody at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the ICE facility in central Pennsylvania.
“My brothers, they need their dad in their life,” said his eldest son, Ahmad, 22, noting that the youngest brothers are 13 and 15. “It’s very important for my dad to be here.”
Abdoulaye Cherif said his father told him that on that morning, he demanded that the ICE agents show him an arrest warrant signed by a judge. Instead, he said, the officers presented an agency-issued detainer.
Today, he said, the family is surviving financially on savings. Emotionally, they struggle without their father.
“He’s like the glue,” Abdoulaye Cherif said. “He directs us, he leads us, he’s the dad. He’s been worried about the situation at home, making sure we get all the bills paid on time.”
Inquirer staff writer Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.
