Beloved Teacher Facing Deportation Wins Reprieve

March 4, 2005 -- -- Obain Attouoman, a Boston special education teacher who was facing deportation because he missed a hearing four years ago, has been granted a reprieve, thanks to the support of hundreds of his students and fellow teachers.

The students and teachers had held numerous rallies outside the Boston offices of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and on Thursday six of Attouoman's Fenway High School students met with Massachussetts Sen. John Kerry.

The former Democratic presidential candidate then filed a bill to stop the deportation of the math teacher.

Attouoman, a native of Ivory Coast who had been ordered to leave the country by today, and his students learned Thursday evening that the teacher was granted a reprieve until early 2007.

"I made it a rule of mine to hope as long as you are alive that hopefully something will happen that will make Homeland Security officials change their mind," Attouoman said.

Attouoman left the Ivory Coast in 1992, seeking political asylum. But he missed a critical deportation hearing four years ago, was jailed for three months and lost an appeal.

His situation brought a great outpouring of support from his students and colleagues, and that brought a response from many Massachusetts politicians. But until Kerry's action on Thursday, nothing had changed the mind of Homeland Security officials.

Attouoman said what surprised him most was the generosity of so many people -- and the suspicion of others.

"Their determination to have me leave the country, especially for somebody who has no criminal record and [does] not represent a threat to their society," he said.

Attouoman, who has taught in the Boston public schools for more than a decade, missed a hearing with a judge on his application for political asylum in June 2001 because he says he misread the handwritten date on the notice he received.

After more than three years of trying to get a new hearing, he has been ordered to leave the country by today. He was originally ordered to leave by Feb. 11, but after hundreds of students, parents and fellow teachers demonstrated outside the Boston office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Feb. 9, he was granted a three-week reprieve.

Immigration officials said the reprieve was to allow Attouoman and his lawyers to try to find a country other than Ivory Coast, where he believes his life would be in danger, that would allow him to enter.

"I made that mistake by misreading that date. We all make mistakes," he said. "All I was asking for was that the court date be rescheduled. You have to give everybody a chance to be heard before you make that determination, to send a person back to a country at war, where his life is in danger."

Attouoman fears that if he returns to Ivory Coast he will be thrown in prison. He comes from a family of political activists and had been imprisoned in his native country twice in 1990 for his involvement in a teachers union and in an opposition political party, he said.

Aside from the mix-up over the date on the hearing notice, Attouoman has never been in any trouble since he first started coming to the United States in 1985, his lawyer said. And at the demonstration on Feb. 9, his students spoke about the kind of impact he has had since he began teaching some of Boston's most troubled ninth-graders at Fenway High School.

"We love him and we need him at Fenway," student Antoinetta Kelly said. "If he is gone, then a part of me is gone as well."

That demonstration was not the first time his students and co-workers took to the streets to help him. After Attouoman was arrested in November 2003 on an outstanding immigration warrant and detained for four months, hundreds of his current and former students marched in his support.

They also wrote letters to the Boston office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Fellow teachers, school officials, Boston City Council members and U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano, among others, also wrote in his support, and he was released in March 2004.

Attouoman's students, co-workers and lawyer Susan Cohen held out hope that somehow he would be allowed to stay in the country beyond the current deadline, at least until the end of the school year. Failing that, they want him to be allowed to find a country besides his homeland where he could go.

"It will hurt our school if he is forced to leave in the middle of the school year," said Peggy Kemp, who runs Fenway High. "The students are learning that there might be alternatives that even if you don't get what you want, which is to allow him to stay permanently, we might get a delay or we might find a safe place for him."

Cohen, a lawyer with Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo P.C., which has taken the case pro bono, said that in 20 years of practicing immigration law she has never seen a case that has drawn so much support or one that could hurt so many people if the government follows through with the deportation.

"This is not just about him, this is about the community, the kids," she said. "Losing him is more than personal, because it will affect so many kids."

Despite the outpouring of support for him and the numerous appeals to reopen his case he has filed since he was ordered removed from the United States in absentia in June 2001, the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Immigration Court never allowed him to plead his case.

"He never got a chance to present his case to a judge because he missed his hearing inadvertently. There's a problem in the system," Cohen said. "It's almost embarrassing to live in a democracy where this could happen.

Attouoman first came to the United States in 1985, on a J-1 exchange visitor visa to work at Camp Homeward Bound in upstate New York as a camp counselor. He returned to Ivory Coast as required by his visa, and came back to the United States to work at the camp every year through 1990.

He was arrested in Ivory Coast several times in the early 1990s, but according to his lawyer these arrests were because of his activities as a teachers union official and his involvement with the FPI, the Ivorian Popular Front, a political party in which he was an active member.

The last time he was arrested, on March 17, 1992, was at a march to protest the killing of university students by government soldiers, he said. He was held at a military camp for over two weeks, and when he was released, fearing for his safety, he left his home in the town of Bingerville and moved to Abidjan, the capital, where he stayed with a friend.

Even then, Attouoman showed his dedication to teaching, commuting to Bingerville to continue working.

"I would not have a problem being sent back to the Ivory Coast if my life would not be in danger there," he said.

On June 15, 1992, Attouoman obtained a J-1 exchange visitor visa from the U.S. Consular Office in Ivory Coast, and arrived in the the United States two days later.

From the beginning of his stay in the United States, Attouoman worked as a teacher. His first two years he worked in an after-school program. In September 1994, he began teaching in the Boston Public School system at the Mary Lyon School, and eventually moved to Fenway High School.

He applied for political asylum on March 15, 1994, and was interviewed on the application on June 13, 2000. Nine months later, on March 12, 2001, his asylum application was not approved by the asylum officer and was referred to the Immigration Court. He had prepared his application himself, and Cohen said that even though his case was solid, it was not presented as thoroughly as it could have been.

Attouoman was sent a notice ordering him to appear before Immigration Judge Eliza Klein in Boston. However, Attouoman said it was difficult to read the handwritten date of the hearing, and he mistakenly believed it was scheduled for July 7, 2001. In fact, the hearing was scheduled for June 7, 2001, and he missed it.

On June 8, 2001, Klein ordered Attouoman deported.

Once he realized that he had missed his removal hearing, Attouoman retained an attorney, who on June 18, 2001, filed an unsuccessful motion to reopen the removal proceedings and rescind the in absentia order of removal. The motion was denied on July 20, 2001.

Attouoman filed an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals, but that was dismissed on Feb. 8, 2002.

After his appeal was denied, Attouoman understood that immigration officials would contact him with instructions, but he said he did not hear anything until Nov. 26, 2003, when he was arrested by Boston police on an outstanding immigration warrant as he was waiting to pick up his car, which had been towed from in front of his school.

He was transferred into the custody of ICE and was held until March 4, 2004, when he was released on an order of supervision, following a demonstration by students and co-workers, and a deluge of letters to immigration officials on his behalf.

Since then he has been working with his lawyer to try to find a safe haven if he is deported, and he continued to teach. He said it is the only thing that gives him any comfort.

"It helps me deal with it, because when I'm in the classroom I forget about it for a little while," he said. "When I'm with the kids, it takes my mind off it to do the thing I love."

ABCNews.com's Dean Schabner and ABC News affiliate WCVB-TV in Boston contributed to this report.