Woman stripped of U.S. citizenship, faces deportation to Afghanistan

DALLAS — A Dallas federal judge has stripped U.S. citizenship from an Afghanistan-born woman who fled the Taliban nearly two decades ago and later worked for the U.S. military as a cultural adviser.

But will the unusual prosecution of Lilla Haiddar, 57, result in her deportation?

Not quickly, attorneys say. Haiddar’s public defenders have appealed the criminal convictions that led to her mandatory revocation of citizenship in the federal criminal court system on June 3. Her attorneys say Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, may seek her removal from the U.S. in a separate case in the federal immigration court system

For now, Haiddar is in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident.

In March, a jury convicted the Arlington woman of committing lies of omission on two passport applications by not listing a previous name that had been used on a transit visa when she fled Afghanistan. Haiddar flew to the U.S. in 2001 and was supposed to leave for Canada the same day, but never did. Instead, she applied for asylum under the name of Lilla Haiddar and told a false story of how she came to New York, prosecutors said.

Haiddar initially told immigration officials she flew from Pakistan to Mexico and then was secreted across the border into the U.S. with the help of an uncle to escape oppression in her native country. Haiddar listed different names and dates of birth on U.S. documents, court records show.

Haiddar was seeking asylum for herself and her two young boys when she first arrived in the U.S. in May 2001. Her transit visa used the name of Marufa Khashim Surgul. Months later, her asylum application used the name of Lilla Haiddar.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn sentenced Haiddar to six months in prison with three months credit for time served. Haiddar could have received up to 30 years in prison, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. She is now being held in the Kaufman County jail.

The case comes as the Justice Department increases denaturalization cases. They have filed a total of 228 civil “denaturalization” cases since 2008 through early March. Of those, nearly 100 were brought since 2017 when President Donald Trump entered the White House.

The process Haiddar underwent — known as denaturalization — has in the past been reserved for egregious crimes, such as those former Nazis who committed war crimes and terrorists.

Haiddar fits none of those descriptions.

Her work as a cultural adviser on war-ravaged Afghanistan for the U.S. Army for nine years was highlighted in the trial, and she obtained asylum in October 2001 because of her fear of persecution in her native country. In one immigration document, Haiddar is described as an interpreter for the U.S. military, though a family member said her English was only conversational.

During her sentencing hearing, Haiddar appeared in federal court, looking tired and with her dark hair in braids. She wore yellow jail scrubs with her hands cuffed to a metal chain at her waist. The words “Kaufman County inmate” were printed in faded black lettering on the back of her shirt. Haiddar wore a face mask and orange disposable gloves because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Her 28-year-old son, Rashad Haiddar, read a statement about his mother’s character. He was 8 years old when he fled Afghanistan with her.

Choking back tears, he spoke of the family’s poverty when he was a child and recalled standing in line at a food bank in the years after arriving in the U.S. He said his single mother worked three jobs to make ends meet.

He testified about how as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, he told his incarcerated mother that a $1,200 stimulus check from the federal government had arrived to help get them through the pandemic’s economic collapse.

“She told me, ‘Why don’t you take some of that money and donate 50 dollars each to her cellmates?’ because they didn’t have proper food to eat.”

Her federal public defender, Stephen J. Green, noted the horrific conditions that caused his client to flee Afghanistan, where women face rape, exploitation and oppression. He highlighted Haiddar’s work as a contractor for the U.S. Army, training soldiers to understand the language

and culture of Afghanistan.

“And that should be worthy of praise in this country and not condemnation,” Green said.

But U.S. prosecutor Tiffany Eggers said, “For 17 years, this woman has been living a lie ... every time she filed a document, she was lying about her identity.”

The judge said the facts of Haiddar’s life were a “mixed bag.” She said, “apart from the fabrications, she was a law-abiding person.”

Lynn said it would be “grotesquely unfair” if Haiddar were deported to Afghanistan and had to come back for criminal court hearings on her appeal.

The judge’s written order revoking citizenship and canceling the certificate of naturalization carried the stipulation that the court be given notice seven business days before any deportation takes place “based in whole or in part on this document, while an appeal of this case is pending.”

Haiddar can still win her fight to stay in the U.S., said a former ICE official. If ICE takes her into custody, Haiddar could be eligible for an immigration bond, said Dan Gividen, the former deputy chief counsel for ICE in the Dallas office until last year.

Gividen, who also worked as a prosecutor for the U.S. attorney’s office, testified in Haiddar’s behalf as an immigration law expert. He believes Haiddar hadn’t made a misrepresentation of a material fact in her immigration documents - a crucial legal point, Gividen said. Moreover, Gividen said, “Both identities came up clean.”

The fact that Haiddar came from a “special interest country, i.e. Muslim country” was probably a factor in her prosecution, the attorney said.

“There is not a snowball’s chance in hell she would have faced prosecution had she been named Rosie Juarez,” Gividen said.

Attorney Sehla Ashai predicted Haiddar’s continuing case will still be challenging. Ashai, an adjunct professor at the immigration rights clinic at Texas A&M’s School of Law in Fort Worth, said ICE is likely to pursue the case based on what the attorney has seen while defending people from Muslim-majority countries.

“It is not uncommon to cast aspersions on national security grounds, for those coming from the Middle East or Muslim countries,” Ashai said. “That even happens to people who support U.S. troops abroad.”

“For people who are from the Middle East or Southeast Asia and Muslim, it is very common.”

Strange twists in immigration law are also common.

Gividen says Haiddar could eventually win her case in immigration courts — and there could be a surprise ending: “She was granted asylum once and there is no reason she wouldn’t be eligible for asylum again,” he said.