Iowa hospital custodian deported to Sierra Leone before judge ruled on stay request, advocates say

Fatou Traore, a custodian at University of Iowa Health Care, was deported to Sierra Leone on Monday while a motion to stay her removal was still pending before an immigration judge, according to two Iowa advocacy groups.

Escucha Mi Voz Iowa and the Immigrant Welcome Network of Johnson County said Tuesday that Traore, an Ivory Coast national and mother of four, was removed before a judge ruled and without a credible fear interview she had requested, Iowa’s News Now reported. “Fatou sought protection, but she was deported before a judge ruled on her motion and without the fear interview she requested,” said Mazahir Salih of the Immigrant Welcome Network.

Traore’s family says she had lived in Iowa City for decades and has never been to Sierra Leone. Little Village reported that she immigrated from Ivory Coast more than two decades ago and has no criminal record. Her husband, Oumar Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, also works at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. The couple have four sons, ages 19 to 3, all of them U.S. citizens.

Traore was detained on September 24. Her family said she was on her way to pick up her sister. Little Village reported that two ICE agents stopped her, displayed no identification and put her in an unmarked car. She was held in Cedar Rapids, then at the Hardin County Jail in Eldora, then in Omaha, and was then sent to the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, an ICE detention center run by the private company LaSalle Corrections.

An immigration judge granted Traore an order of withholding of removal in 2011, according to Little Village. The order bars deportation to a person’s home country when the person has shown a risk of death, injury or persecution there, and it allows the person to live and work legally in the United States. Her husband is covered by the same type of order.

ICE did not give a reason for the arrest until October 1, the day after a rally in Iowa City. In a written statement, ICE said Traore had used “a fake birth certificate and fake passport to enter the U.S. at an unknown time and location” and that an immigration judge had issued a final removal order against her in 2011. Her family says the allegations are false.

More than 400 people gathered at First United Methodist Church in Iowa City on September 30 to call for her release, KCRG reported. That day, Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin asking for a stay of deportation for Traore, “a constituent of mine and a valued member of the University of Iowa community.” The letter said deporting her “would violate the withholding of removal order.”

On October 6, Sen. Chuck Grassley said during a weekly call with Iowa reporters, “If there’s any possibility of helping in this case, we’ll be able to get the job done,” according to Little Village. The outlet reported it was unclear whether Grassley or other Iowa lawmakers besides Miller-Meeks contacted the Department of Homeland Security about Traore.

On October 8, three Iowa bishops, Lutheran Bishop Amy Current, Catholic Bishop Dennis Walsh and United Methodist Bishop Kennetha Bigham-Tsai, called on Mullin to reunite Traore with her children, KCRG reported. The bishops represent 231,000 Iowans.

Traore is a member of AFSCME Council 61, Local 12, according to a first-person account in Labor Notes by Sara Gilmore, a phlebotomy technician at the University of Iowa Health Care Medical Center and a member of the same local. Gilmore wrote that Traore worked at the hospital for more than a decade. She wrote that co-workers circulated a petition asking the hospital and other local institutions to speak out against the detention, and that the hospital responded, “You can voice your opinion as a private citizen, but we can’t make any kind of statement about this.”

Gilmore called on the Department of Homeland Security, local representatives and the hospital to bring Traore back, and asked Iowa’s congressional delegation to demand answers about why she was deported before a ruling on her stay motion and why her request for a credible fear interview was denied.

According to Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Tracker, cited by Little Village, an ICE plane carrying detainees left an airport in Louisiana at 5:30 p.m. Monday and stopped in Dakar, Senegal, and Accra, Ghana, in addition to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Traore’s son Esoumaila Diallo learned of the deportation when his mother called him from Sierra Leone.

The advocacy groups said legal teams in Sierra Leone, New York City and Iowa City are working to assist Traore and seek her return.