Patricia and Mohammed Hussain Story

Fight for Freedom
By Aaron Diamant
Imagine waking up one morning to FBI agents, guns drawn, breaking down your door. In front of your terrified family, they tackle you, and haul you off to jail. Three years later, you don’t face any criminal charges, but you’re still locked up. “It’s been a total disaster,” said Patricia Hussain of Des Plaines, Illinois. Her husband, Mohammad, has spent the last three years behind bars in a Wisconsin jail. Still, Patricia Hussain puts on a good face for her daughter. “It’s overwhelming. Very overwhelming and very sad,” Hussain sighed. In 2004, Hussain says her daughter watched in horror as the FBI took her father away in handcuffs. She only sees him a couple times a month during short visits to the Dodge County Jail, which houses federal detainees. “She’s really traumatized by this whole experience,” Hussain told the I-Team. “I mean she cries every time she sees him.” The Feds charged Mohammad Hussain with not telling anyone he was a member of a political party in Pakistan when he applied for American citizenship, and lying about being a citizen on a mortgage application. Two documents, Hussain’s lawyers say, someone else filled out for him. Still, Hussain got convicted. “It does kind of boggle the mind to think that somebody can be in custody for three years for checking the wrong box,” said Geoff Heeren of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. Even more mind-boggling, last year, a judge threw out the criminal conviction. Hussain should have gotten out then, but the government filed immigration charges which kept him locked up. “At every step of the way, everytime we think that we’ve succeeded in getting Mohammad Hussain out of prison, something else has happened,” Heeren said. “The government has done something else to keep him there.” Eventually, another judge ruled Hussain could get out on bond. The department of homeland security blocked it– calling him a security risk. “They’re just crucifying him because of his race, his ethnic background and his religion,” fumed Patrica Hussain. Mohammad Hussain left Pakistan for the United States in 1994. He got married a year later. He and his wife own a home in Des Plaines, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Hussain has a Green Card and had never been in trouble with the law. In an ironic twist, back in 2003, less than a year before the Feds picked him up, they City of Des Plaines gave Hussain a citizenship award for breaking up a store robbery and saving a clerk’s life. Now, after three years in jail, Hussain’s health is failing. He’s losing his teeth and his hair. The I-Team interviewed Mohammad Hussain about his ordeal on the phone from jail. “I’ve been in constant pain,” lamented Hussain. “I mean i felt intimidated, humiliated and disrespected.” He says he can’t understand why the government is treating him as a terrorist. “They don’t have any proof,” Hussain argued. “They don’t have any evidence against me. I mean they are just speculating. They are just assuming in their mind that i’m a terrorist. And how to counter that? I don’t know.” Neither does his family who just wants him to come home. “They have literally raped us of our livelihood,” said Patricia Hussain. “They have raped us of our own happiness, our own innocence. As a U.S.-born, I never thought this would happen to my family.” Hussain’s lawyers say keeping their client locked up is unconstitutional. A Federal Appeals Court is set to hear the case in November. We’ll keep you posted.

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