Asif Amin Cheema, 63, a longtime Chicago-area resident who owned the fast-food lunch restaurant Best Sub #2 in Humboldt Park, 2653 W. North Ave, was deported Thursday night on an evening flight out of O’Hare Airport to his home country of Pakistan, his family said.Cheema’s official deportation came after the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court denied his motion to stay in the country last week. It was the third time ICE officials acted to deport him despite serious medical issues and no criminal record, according to his daughter, Rabia Amin, Block Club Chicago reported.Cheema, who lived in the Chicago area for over 30 years, was detained near his home in suburban Addison during a targeted enforcement operation in September, a Homeland of Security spokesperson previously said. Cheema was in the process of updating his immigration status and setting up green card interviews when he was taken, according to his family.Cheema’s family fought his deportation since last month, when he collapsed at O’Hare during the first attempt at his deportation. The medical emergency added fresh urgency to Cheema’s case, which gained media attention and that of local officials.The family held an emergency press conference before his flight Thursday, during which relatives called on elected officials to do more to protect families from being torn apart and to bring further awareness to the country’s “flawed immigration system,” Amin told Block Club Friday. “This is not the end, we’re going to continue fighting and we’re going to bring him back home and we’re going to give him the justice he deserves,” she said.Cheema’s family fought to stop his deportation to Pakistan based on a 1993 removal order that Amin said the family “had no idea” about until her father was detained in September as part of Operation Midway Blitz. Cheema was never given a fair opportunity to fight the old order, she said.The court’s refusal to keep him in the country came as the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative appellate body in the Department of Justice, was considering to reopen his pending deportation appeal, but the motion was not ruled on before his deportation and was now moot.That meant his family must restart Cheema’s immigration case from the scratch, his attorney previously said. Amin is also a lawyer and is helping with her father’s case.“There will be no change — and families will continue to be torn apart,” Amin said of the federal govt. “This is not the end and we’re going to continue to endlessly fight for my father’s return back to America so he can be with us again.”She said losing Cheema was heartbreaking for her mother and her siblings and difficult on the Humboldt Park business he operated, which was being managed by his employees and his 19-year-old son.Cheema had been in the United States since the ’80s, going back and forth between countries with a visa until about 1997, his family said. Cheema was known as Amin Choudry to some in Humboldt Park, and he helped other Pakistani immigrants open businesses around the city and suburbs since the ’90s, Amin previously said.Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th), who had been in contact with the family last month, said in a statement that she was heartbroken to hear of his forced removal, especially after he dedicated 30 years to building his Humboldt Park business “feeding thousands of customers, sometimes for free.”“His selfless acts of kindness stand as a model for our neighbors,” Fuentes said in a statement posted to social media Thursday. “The consequences of forcibly tearing apart families and communities will ripple for years to come.”The family launched a GoFundMe to help with the “heartbreaking transition” and to figure out next steps, Amin said. The fundraiser raised over $6.64 lakh of its Rs 11.62 lakh goal in less than 24 hours.“Donations will go toward essential living expenses, legal and administrative costs, medical needs, and helping us stay connected and supported while we figure out what comes next as a family separated by borders,” Amin wrote on the fundraiser. “While this chapter is painful, we continue to hold onto faith.”The family also filed a lawsuit against the federal govt the day Cheema was deported, alleging local and national ICE leaders and “multiple unknown ICE agents” denied him his due process rights and withheld medication from him for at least three days before his collapse last month.The suit also said officials violated the Geneva Convention Against Torture by subjecting him to “no less than three mock deportations where law enforcement informed him of impending removal and transferred him to O”Hare Airport and back.”A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security denied that Cheema was denied medication and said last week he was “pending his removal home” following the court ruling, but did not reply to an additional request for comment Friday. Go to Source
