St. Cloud man sues after failed efforts to move family to U.S. from refugee camp

After a long day of work driving a truck, Rabi Mohamed returns to his empty home in St. Cloud thinking of the wife and three sons he left behind in Ethiopia. He says the U.S. government is creating hurdles to their immigration, relegating them to life in a refugee camp for the last 6½ years.

Now Mohamed, a 35-year-old Somali refugee, is suing to force the federal government to act on his petitions to move his family to the United States. He has been separated from his wife, Sahra Abdulahi, and their three young sons for more than seven years.

"I went through so much difficulty since I have been away from my family," said Mohamed, who holds a green card as a lawful permanent U.S. resident. "I had to get used to a life that I never experienced before — a life of living on my own."

Mohamed filed his lawsuit this month in U.S. District Court, naming Ur Jaddou, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Rena Bitter, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, as defendants.

The suit asks the court to hold that the federal government violated Mohamed's constitutional right to due process when it delayed issuing a final decision on his request to sponsor his family's immigration to the U.S., and to compel the government to issue a decision.

In an email to Sahan Journal, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials said they don't comment on pending litigation.

In an interview translated from Somali, Mohamed shared how he became separated from his family and the complications that arose when he tried to reunite them later.

"Because he understood that adding his wife and young son to his refugee case would significantly delay processing, Mr. Mohamed made the difficult decision to travel to the United States alone, hoping that his family would soon be able to join him in the United States," according to the suit.

As a young child, Mohamed and his family fled civil war in Somalia and ended up in the refugee camp in Ethiopia, according to the suit. Life in the camp "was difficult and bleak," with few work opportunities and little food, according to the suit.

Since 2015, Mohamed has seen his wife and children only once, in Ethiopia for three months in late 2018 and early 2019. "The day I had to leave them again, I felt dread and sadness that I still carry with me," he said.

Once he became a permanent U.S. resident, he filed family reunification petitions in 2016 to bring his wife and sons to the United States under the Refugee Act of 1980. He complied with requests from Immigration Services to document their relationship and got help from U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, who sent an inquiry to federal officials on Mohamed's behalf.

According to the suit, however, Immigration Services officials said they couldn't verify Mohamed's relationship to his family and closed his petitions.

Last month he received the records, which showed his petitions had been temporarily closed until he provided DNA evidence. According to the suit, he had never received notice that the government wanted his DNA sample. And the records didn't clarify whether the petitions were closed for good.

Mohamed's attorney, Alexandra Zaretsky with the New York-based International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), said that providing a DNA sample is unnecessary based on the government's requirements. The IRAP, a refugee advocacy group, is working with Prokosch Law, a Roseville-based immigration law firm, on Mohamed's suit.

Zaretsky said that more than six years without a final decision on a family reunification petition is a comparatively long wait.

"This issue is affecting the Somali community in particular, but across the board, there are delays in family reunification," she said. "If the government sees this lawsuit and actually devotes the resources they need to clear the backlog, that would benefit everyone."

Mohamed talks to his wife and children over the phone when he can, and regularly sends money to support them. But maintaining their lives in separate places has become a financial and emotional strain.

What he wants most from the suit is a clear answer about the status of his petitions.