A Pakistani man who has been ordered removed from the U.S. but is unable to return to his homeland was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Bangor to eight months in prison.
Zafar Iqbal-Khan, who has been living in the Bangor area for at least a decade, in June pleaded guilty to violating the conditions under which he was allowed to stay in the U.S. by committing new crimes. He was arrested last year for drunken driving, driving without a license and failure to give a correct name.
He pleaded guilty to those charges in February at the Penobscot Judicial Center, and was sentenced to two years in prison with all but six months suspended and two years probation, according to his attorney, David Bate of Bangor.
He was charged in federal court in Bangor with willful failure to comply with terms of release under supervision. Iqbal-Khan was found guilty of that charge in June.
Once he completes his sentence in about 2½ months — since he has already been in jail for 5½ months — Iqbal-Khan will be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement until he can appear before an immigration judge again for removal proceedings. Iqbal-Khan has been in and out of ICE custody since 2004, according to court documents. He has been ordered removed several times, but the Pakistani government has refused to issue him travel documents for more than a decade.
The last time Iqbal-Khan was in federal court in Bangor, in 2013, U.S. District Judge Gene Carter called ICE’s efforts to remove Iqbal-Khan from the U.S. “ineffective and slothful.”
Five years ago, Bate told Carter that one the problems about being able to return to his homeland is that in 2004 when he was first arrested by ICE, officials seized his original passport, birth certificate and other identifying documents. Bate told the judge in 2013 that because Iqbal-Khan did not have those documents, the Pakistani government had refused to issue him travel documents.
Bate told Carter that Iqbal-Khan was detained by ICE between 2004 and 2006, and again in 2007. Bate said that ICE continuously moved him around the county from one facility to another.
That experience is one of the reasons Iqbal-Khan refused to properly identify himself when he was stopped last year on suspicion of drunken driving.
“The [2017 operating under the influence of intoxicants] was not really that significant, but he was terrified of re-entering ICE custody, so he gave a false name and failed to appear in state court,” Bate said Monday after the sentencing. “His past experience with ICE was one of tortuous transport and humiliating and dangerous incarceration, way out of proportion for an immigration issue. Unfortunately, he now expects only more of the same when he is released into ICE custody at the termination of his eight-month federal sentence.”
Iqbal-Khan first entered the U.S. in July 1999 on a visitor’s visa but did not leave as required in February 2000. Initially, he was ordered to be removed in 2005.