January 15, 2005
The Minnesota office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) disclosed Friday that 293 Somali refugees living in Minnesota or the Dakotas are under final orders of removal and therefore could be deported to their homeland.
Another 143 are in the process of removal proceedings but have not been ruled deportable by an immigration judge.
The fate of those 436 refugees -- and others like them around the country -- had been awaiting a Supreme Court decision on whether U.S. law permits deportations to a country, like Somalia, that has no government able to receive deportees. Somalia has been ravaged by civil war and has had no functioning national government since 1991.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in the case of Minnesota Somali Keyse Jama that Somalis who have either entered the United States illegally or forfeited their status as legal aliens by committing serious crimes can be deported to Somalia. Although exact numbers are elusive, the Twin Cities is believed to be home to the largest U.S. population of Somalis.
Of the Somalis covered by ICE's three-state summary, at least 95 percent are Minnesota cases, said Tim Counts, spokesman for the regional ICE office. The group of deportable Somalis includes 102 who have criminal convictions and 191 who lack proper legal status to remain in the United States.
Nationwide, 3,568 Somalis have been ruled deportable, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
In reacting to the Supreme Court decision this week, local Somalis and their advocates have expressed a hope that the U.S. government will take into account the dangerous circumstances in Somalia and deport only those who represent a threat to U.S. security. But Counts said the agency is obliged to carry out the removal of those whom the courts have declared deportable.
The government may, on a case-by-case basis, take into account requests by Somalis to be released in a particular region of Somalia where they may have clan connections, Counts said, but the agency is under no legal obligation to do so.