Thread by @ACLU

This is Urooj. She is an ICU nurse in Southern California on the front lines fighting COVID-19.

She and her husband Amir have two small children, but she is currently raising them alone. Amir is in ICE detention about to be deported.

Urooj and Amir are both originally from Pakistan. She is a US citizen, as are their two children.

But @ICEgov is about to tear their family apart, even as she puts her life on the line every day to treat people who are sick with COVID-19.

Amir came to the US on a student visa to get his PhD in Environmental Science and Engineering at the University of Texas.

He applied for a spousal visa with his first wife, who he met at university.

After 9/11, he came under the government's radar. They detained Amir, suspicious of him because he was a Pakistani man researching bioluminescent bacteria.

He and his first wife divorced while he was in detention. Amir no longer had legal standing, and his visa lapsed.

Amir's professor had to vouch for the fact that he was not a terrorist, and he was eventually released.

Now on ICE's watch, he would get picked up again and again by the agency over the years.

During a two-year stint in detention in El Paso, Amir used the library to teach himself the law.

He filed more than 200 legal actions for people he was detained alongside.

Every other time Amir has been detained by ICE, courts ruled that he must be released. But he was picked up again 4 months ago.

This time, the agency has travel documents to deport him back to Pakistan.

Amir is a client in an @ACLU_SoCal lawsuit at Adelanto detention facility. A few days ago, ICE told him he was COVID positive.

ICE then made the horribly reckless decision to transfer him to the Florence facility in Arizona in a first move toward deportation.

Amir is about to be deported back to Pakistan. His wife Urooj and their children will remain here, separated from him.

Should she get sick while caring for patients in the ICU, there will be no one to care for her children.

This should not be allowed to happen.

Call the field office at Florence and ask that @ICEgov halt his deportation: [phone], extension 8.

We must fight for Amir and his family. This is not the kind of country we want to be.

UPDATE: Call the Adelanto detention facility at [phone] and ask that ICE halt Amir's deportation.