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February 17, 2005

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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