Video shows the moment a Gaithersburg mother waited for for months.
“It’s amazing,” Zavvar said. “I’m glad it’s over.”
He also had an emotional reunion with his beloved dog, Duke.
Days after his happy homecoming, the 52-year-old recounted the morning of June 28.
“When I saw the first ICE agent exit his car and walk towards me with his hand on his weapon and asking if my dog is friendly, I said ‘Yes he is friendly,’” he said. “My heart kind of, like, sank — like, I can’t believe this is happening.”
Zavvar sat down with News4 on Tuesday to reflect on the 77 days he spent in federal detention.
“Unnecessary, inhumane, corrupt,” he said.
Zavvar said he came to the U.S. from Iran legally as a student when he was 12 and eventually got his green card.
Years after a misdemeanor for marijuana possession in the late 1990s, he was stopped while reentering the country in 2004, which started the deportation process, according to his attorney.
His attorney said that case was resolved in 2007 when he was granted a “withholding of removal order” to Iran.
“Saying that you can stay here as long as you don’t get in trouble, that you stay clean and just stay here, work, pay taxes, and that’s what I was doing,” Zavvar said.
But nearly two decades later, ICE agents surrounded him in his quiet Gaithersburg neighborhood.
Zavvar said after he was picked up in June, he was first taken to a facility in Baltimore, where he spent five days in a holding cell. The cell had 30 to 40 people sleeping on a concrete floor, he said.
He was then transported to a detention center in Texas, according to online ICE detention records.
He said he was next sent to Ohio, back to Baltimore and eventually landed in Louisiana.
In July, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement, “Zavvar had almost 20 years to self-deport and leave the U.S. The Trump administration will not ignore the rule of law […] criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
“I really didn’t think that it would be to this extent and the types of people that they’re apprehending and the way that they’re going about doing it,” Zavvar said.
Loved ones said the government gave orders to deport him to Romania or Australia. However, with the help of family, friends and coworkers rallying around him and raising more than $50,000 for his legal fees, a judge ordered his release last week.
“I’m getting to that point that I’m believing right now because I can touch him, you know,” Zavvar’s mother, said.
Now that he’s getting back to his routine, Zavaar said he isn’t out of the woods. He’s waiting for an immigration judge to be assigned to his case.
“We’re going to argue that the laws that were used to initially deport me based on my marijuana conviction in 1998, that those laws no longer exist, and to get my green card back and apply for citizenship, which I partly blame myself for that because I should have done that a little while ago,” he said.
And while he waits for his next day in court, his mother said this ordeal has taught her a valuable lesson:
“If you need to do something, do it today instead of tomorrow.”
from Local – NBC4 Washington https://ift.tt/Ohv3sGJ
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