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It 'was like a slave ship'

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The father of this family, (on the left), is Mayo Clinic employee Abdoulmalik Ibrahim, who is among 92 Somali people whom the government is trying to deport back to their home country. Photo courtesy of Kim Hunter.

Ninety-two Somalis, including former Mayo Clinic employee Abdoulmalik Ibrahim, sat bound and shackled on an airplane for nearly two days, some urinating on themselves, during a botched U.S. deportation attempt, a class-action lawsuit filed in the United States says.

U.S. immigration agents "kicked, struck, choked and dragged detainees" during the journey that began Dec. 7, the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Miami says. Some of the Somalis were put in straitjackets. The lawsuits seeks to prevent their deportation, and a hearing is set for Jan. 2.

"It's really difficult to relate, because you're got the horrid conditions on the plane, 48 hours in shackles," said Kim Hunter, the Twin Cities immigration attorney presenting Ibrahim. It "was like a slave ship going away across the Atlantic."

The flight to Somalia from Louisiana reached Dakar, Senegal before sitting on the runway for 23 hours and returning to the U.S. because the relief crew was not rested enough, the lawsuit says.

Lawyers are alarmed that the U.S. is returning a growing number of people to a country that has long been a war zone. "It is not safe for these men and women to return, especially in light of the escalation of terrorist violence in Somalia in the last weeks," said Rebecca Sharpless, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Miami School of Law, which filed the lawsuit.

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Hunter said that Ibrahim told her that while stranded on the tarmac, the air on the plane became so foul that some Somali passengers began coughing and displaying flu-like symptoms. But when they sought over-the-medication from U.S. immigration agents for relief, their requests were denied.

Their misery became so acute that when agents announced that they returning to the U.S., a group of Somali deportees began to protest returning to the U.S., figuring they would get better treatment in Somali detention than in U.S. custody

"They were more willing to potentially take their chances in Somalia than to be locked up in the U.S.," Hunter said.

Ibrahim, a married man and the father of four children in the Rochester area, was detained three months ago by immigration agents during a check-in with the ICE office. Ibrahim was a Mayo Clinic cardiovascular technician at the time of his detention.

It's unclear how long Ibrahim has lived in the U.S., but he entered the U.S. seeking asylum from his war-torn homeland. Though undocumented and living under a deportation order since 2004, he was for much of that time been under a "protective status" that allowed him to live in the U.S.

The lawsuit says U.S. immigration law forbids sending people home to countries where they could face persecution or torture, and that al-Shabab is known to target those being returned to Somalia from the U.S.

On Tuesday evening, a U.S. District judge ruled that ICE cannot remove the Somalis and set a hearing for Jan. 2, Sharpless said.

The Somalia-based al-Shabab extremist group was blamed for the massive truck bombing in the capital, Mogadishu, that killed 512 in October. Only a few attacks since 9/11 have killed more people. Al-Shabab, the deadliest Islamic extremist group in Africa and the target of more than 30 U.S. airstrikes under the Trump administration, holds large parts of rural southern and central Somalia.

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A year-end report by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says 521 Somalis were deported this year, up sharply from 198 last year. Somalia by far saw the largest number of citizens deported home among African nations.

"It was not until the very end of 2016 and into 2017 that ICE sought for the first time to detain and then remove Somalis in larger numbers using charter flights," the lawsuit says.

ICE does not comment on pending lawsuits and has denied mistreating the Somalis on the failed deportation flight this month. It also has said more than 60 of the Somalis had criminal convictions.

Hiunter said the Ibrahim and the 91 other Somali citizens were on buses on the way to the airport for what would have been the second attempt to deport them when the judges's order halted the deportation.

"If the judge had not issued the order they would have been deported this morning," she said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday. "We are relieved and thankful that the judge acted in time."

Hunter said the judge's order gives her clients a "couple weeks of breathing room." If the judge rules to extend the order blocking their removal on Jan. 2, that would provide more time to "get our case actually decided."

"I think it really comes down to sort of the American ideal of due process," Hunter said. "I think the fair and right thing to do obviously is to give these the opportunity to make their case."

The Somalis, with family ties in Minnesota and elsewhere around the U.S., are being held in two detention centers in South Florida.

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There was no immediate comment from Somalia's government.

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