Since ICE took her husband away, Madina Mamadjonova said life has been a nightmare.
She’s trying to support her family, Mamadjonova said Tuesday, but she can’t be both a “mother and father” to their three children. The youngest, a son named Ibrohim, is nearly 2 years old -- that’s about how long Bakhodir Madjitov has been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE agents came into the family's Windsor home and arrested Madjitov in December 2017 for being “unlawfully present in the United States,” according to an ICE spokesman. In short, Madjitov had overstayed his visa and an immigration judge ordered his removal in 2013.
Now Madjitov, 38, faces deportation as soon as next week, one of his lawyers said. ICE has already tried to deport him once.
After a recent denial from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Madjitov’s legal team on Tuesday filed for a stay of removal with ICE.
“Bring my husband home immediately, please,” Mamadjonova pleaded outside the Hartford federal building that houses immigration offices. “He’s not a criminal. He’s a good, kind guy who cares for his family, who loves his family. The children are crying every night. I can’t take it anymore. Enough is enough.”
Among the supporters standing with Mamadjonova were advocates from the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and an interfaith coalition. They said that Madjitov -- a Muslim who has lived in the U.S. since 2006 and worked as a home health aide -- has never been charged with a crime.
But if he’s deported to his native Uzbekistan, they fear that the consequences will be severe.
Madjitov’s lawyer, Diana Blank of the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, said Madjitov could be tortured -- in part because he already sought asylum in the U.S. and could be seen by authorities in Uzbekistan as a “suspicious” person if he returns. Blank said Madjitov applied for asylum after arriving in the U.S. That application was denied. Then, as Madjitov tried other avenues to gain legal residency, he overstayed his visa.
Madjitov’s wife and three children are all U.S. citizens, Blank said.
“We’re asking ICE to liberate him,” she said. “He is a person with no criminal history who has been a devoted family man, a member of the community. His family has suffered unthinkably in the last two years. We’re asking them to free him. But we’re asking them at the very least to issue a stay of removal so that he can see his 11th Circuit case through.”
A spokesman for ICE said Tuesday that Madjitov is being detained in Louisiana “pending his removal from the United States.”
