After nearly two decades caring for patients in South Bend, a local physician quietly closed his practice last month and left the United States under threat of deportation.
The doctor, who asked not to be named due to safety concerns for his family, was granted asylum in 1996 after disclosing a past political affiliation with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a Marxist faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. At the time, the affiliation did not disqualify him from staying in the U.S.
But this January, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services notified him that his asylum status was being terminated. He was told to leave voluntarily or face deportation to Jordan.
“I think the focus of the story is not me being deported,” he said. “But that they have decided that they have the authority to decide what a terrorist organization is, and what’s not, and then they could make decisions upon that.”
The doctor says his political involvement was brief and circumstantial. Born in Jordan, he had traveled to Libya for medical school. As part of Libyan conscription, he was deployed to Lebanon in 1982, when Israel invaded.
“In 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, I was there,” he said. “I was a student in medical school. So, I was there for a year, and Israel invaded during that year, so I was part of the resistance. It’s not something that would be categorized at all as a terrorist activity.”
He said witnessing war firsthand changed him.
“I’m a pacifist now,” he said. “I’ve never seen a war that anybody comes out as a winner. Either there is a loser or a bigger loser.”
He left the organization in 1986 and resettled in the U.S. a decade later. He completed his residency, received a medical license, and opened a practice in South Bend in 2008.
“In 1996 they granted me the asylum,” he said. “I went through the residency program. I got my license to practice. I came to South Bend. I’ve been practicing here since 2008.”
But after the Sept. 11 attacks, he says he noticed a shift in how the U.S. treated individuals with backgrounds like his.
“In 2011 they had an interview,” he said. “We contacted Joe Donnelly. He was the representative at that time. I’m like; Joe Donnelly. I’m not going to even touch him with a ten foot pole.”
When he applied for citizenship, he said he was denied due to his past.
“They say that I’m affiliated to undesignated terrorist organizations,” he said.
The doctor said his patients were surprised by his sudden departure, but he struggled with how much to tell them.
“Some of them I told the truth. Some of them I just lied to them, because you can’t tell everybody what’s going on,” he said. “A half truth is always a lie, right? I lied to them.”
He told many he was simply retiring.
“They don’t know. It’s none of their business, really. Just, that I’m retiring. It doesn’t matter why I’m retiring.”
The doctor has since resettled in Canada with help from that country’s immigration system. He says he’s not worried about himself, but about the broader precedent.
“It’s not me. I’m just a peripheral. I’m just nobody,” he said. “The story is law and order and the democracy that this country priding their selves with.”
No criminal charges were ever filed against him in the U.S. His asylum status was revoked solely based on re-evaluation of past affiliations under current legal standards.
