A federal judge has extended until Friday a 48-hour restraining order he issued last Sunday halting efforts by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to deport Faramaz and Behrooz Sedgh, 23-year-old Iranian-Jewish twin brothers.
Judge Leo Glasser, of the U.S. Federal Court for the Eastern District, who issued the restraining order, has indicated that unless the INS can prove by Friday that it has found a country which will admit the brothers, a writ of habeas corpus will be issued, David Pollock, assistant director of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of New York, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today.
The JCRC and other Jewish and non-Jewish groups have intervened on behalf of the twins whose deportation was ordered because they entered the U.S. 10 months ago on false passports. According to Pollock, attomeys for the Sedgh brothers believe that if the INS cannot come up with a country that will receive the deportees, the court will release them on bond.
JUDGE ACTED ON HUMANITARIAN GROUNDS
Judge Glasser acted on humanitarian grounds Sunday after the brothers were twice flown to Spain and twice refused admission to that country and flown back to New York, between last Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon. The INS had placed them on a flight to Spain because that was their final country of departure before reaching the U.S. on January 22, 1983. The Spanish authorities had informed the INS beforehand that they would not be admitted.
The young men were spared, at the 11th hour, from a fifth trans-Atlantic flight to Spain by the court order. They were taken from John F. Kennedy Airport Sunday to the INS detention center at the old Brooklyn Navy Yard. But they have since been transferred to the Manhattan Correctional Center, a city jail, Pollock told the JTA. He could not state the reason for the transfer.
Meanwhile, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D. NY) and Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R. NY) were conferring with Justice Department and INS officials today to try to resolve the case, Pollock said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
