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February 17, 2005
Fenway High students rally to stop teacher’s deportation
Jeremy Schwab
To students and colleagues, Obain Attouoman is an invaluable asset.
The Fenway High School math instructor often takes the time before
or after school to provide extra help. He specializes in reaching
students with learning disabilities and works with young male
students in an after-school support group. Attouoman even volunteers
to teach math once a week to youngsters at the Museum of Science.
To the Department of Homeland Security, however, the political
refugee from the Ivory Coast is simply an alien slated for deportation.
After Attouoman failed to show up for a 2001 immigration hearing,
reportedly because he misread the handwritten date on the letter,
a judge denied his application for asylum and ordered him deported.
Just two days before Attouoman was ordered to report to the John
Fitzgerald Kennedy Federal Building for deportation last week,
an estimated 300 Fenway High and Boston Arts Academy students,
teachers and administrators rallied outside the Cambridge Street
edifice in downtown Boston to demand that Attouoman be allowed
to remain in the country.
Students, teachers and Boston elected officials expressed incredulity
that the Department of Homeland Security would not grant exceptions
for upstanding citizens.
“With the state of our country now, after 9/11, everyone
is grouped into a category as threatening, instead of people being
looked at as individuals,” said Fenway High School counselor
and health teacher Brian Gonsalves.
“People in our country are trying to get away from conditions
in their own country. They are trying to live the ideals we preach,
and they are doing it, and we’re still not looking at it
as an individual basis, and understanding that these are good
citizens, people we’d want to support.”
City councilors Maura Hennigan and Chuck Turner spoke at the protest,
then met with Bruce Chadbourne, New England field office director
for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Chadbourne told them
that the case did not meet the extraordinary circumstances that
would justify a reversal.
The councilors did coax Chadbourne to grant Attouoman a stay of
deportation until March 4, giving him time to search for another
country to give him asylum from the politically volatile Ivory
Coast.
Current and former students lamented the impending loss of their
teacher.
“He’s the reason why I didn’t fail,” said
ninth grader Bryan Ross, who recently took Attouoman’s math
course. “The way he teaches, he involves the whole class,
so you won’t get left behind.”
“The thing I like about him is he is willing to take the
time to help you with work you don’t understand,”
said tenth grader David Casiano.
Fenway Principal Peggy Kemp said the teacher’s expulsion
will hurt the school community both academically and psychologically.
“The message it sends to our students that they are going
to take him out in the middle of the year; it sends a message
that our government doesn’t care,” said Kemp. “Last
year, when he was arrested for three months, we could not find
anyone to replace him, and I am not optimistic about this year.”
Last school year, Attouoman was held for three months in the Suffolk
County Jail pending deportation after his car was towed from outside
the school and police then discovered that he had a deportation
order.
It is unclear how police apparently pulled up the information
about Attouoman’s deportation order.
Police officers around the country routinely check the National
Criminal Information Center database, which contains the names
of criminals with deportation orders, when officers book somebody
or make traffic stops.
However, Attouoman does not have a criminal record, according
to his lawyer.
“He has no criminal history,” said the lawyer, Susan
Cohen of the firm Mintz Levin. “That is our understanding
and the government’s understanding, too. I met with the
director of ICE this morning, and he said to Obain, ‘You
have no criminal history.’”
Last January, BPD spokeswoman Mariellen Burns told the Banner
the department does not check a separate Immigration and Customs
Enforcement database containing the names of people with deportation
orders but no criminal history because the department wants to
maintain good relations with the community.
“We want all victims of crimes to feel they can come forward
and that we can help them,” said Burns.
A department spokeswoman could not be reached for comment before
this week’s paper went to press. It remains unclear whether
it was Boston police or others who discovered Attouoman’s
deportation orders, as Attouoman could not be reached for comment.
After students and staff from Fenway High and the Boston Arts
Academy protested last March, Attouoman was freed the next day,
and supporters say they were told that his case was being put
back under review.
“We thought everything was okay at that point,” said
one supporter at last week’s rally. “Then we heard
they were going to deport him Friday. It came as a shock that
they weren’t going to keep looking at his case.”
Still, supporters haven’t given up hope.
“We’re approaching every single person we can including
the mayor, the superintendent, Kerry and Kennedy’s offices,”
said Fenway High math teacher Abbie Schirmer, who has helped lead
the campaign in support of her colleague. “The students
have written letters to the president.”
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