NORTHAMPTON — “It’s like being in paradise.”
That was how Niberd Alzendi Abdalla described the feeling Thursday of leaving the Suffolk County House of Correction after more than seven months in custody.
Earlier this week an immigration judge in Boston ordered that Abdalla, an undocumented Iraqi immigrant who has lived in the United States for more than 40 years, be released on his own recognizance, and with no conditions. On Thursday, that order became a reality as Abdalla was picked up by his wife, Ellen McShane, and attorney Buz Eisenberg.
“It feels really like winning the Super Bowl for the Patriots last year — coming from two, three touchdowns back and still winning,” Abdalla said, sitting in an office off King Street. “It feels amazing. God sent me my angel and his team.”
Getting him back to western Massachusetts and his wife wasn’t easy, though, but once a judge handed down the order and the day came, Abdalla was released ahead of the normally scheduled 11 a.m. release time. Eisenberg had a 3½-hour struggle with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday, in which he showed the immigration court order that Abdalla be released on his personal recognizance, to no avail.
On Thursday morning, Eisenberg and McShane arrived in Burlington just after 10 a.m. and, thinking they had time to kill, went and got breakfast. When they returned, Abdalla was waiting, already having signed the necessary papers and been fingerprinted to retrieve his belongings.
“He was sitting there, (saying) ‘Where have you been?’” McShane said.
“I said, ‘Have you been here long?’ He said ‘about an hour,’” Eisenberg continued. “It was a seamless process today.”
Abdalla’s parents sent him to the United States in 1975. He spent some time in Connecticut and New York City before coming to Hampshire County, his home for the last two decades. Over the years, he applied for legal status several times but failed to realize that he needed to follow up, Abdalla told the Gazette last summer.
From 1987 until 2003, he said, he was able to update his work visa each year, but then the Iraq War began, and in 2003 immigration authorities arrested him when he went to renew his work visa. When they released him, they instructed him to report in regularly, which he had been doing twice yearly for the past seven years. It was during a scheduled appointment with ICE in June that he was arrested again.
For about an hour Thursday, Abdalla fielded questions from reporters and spoke to supporters from the Pioneer Valley Workers Center. Sitting next to his wife, he recalled some of his time behind bars and looked toward to a future that would allow him to return to western Massachusetts.
For now, the couple is living in Danbury, Connecticut.
Recalling the first days after he was picked up by ICE, Abdalla said he was with four other people. One person was deported but three remained.
“The rest of us had similar stories,” he said. “We were all hardworking people, no crimes, no big things, nothing egregious, they just picked them up and came the same way I did.”
The stress of the ordeal landed Abdalla in the hospital, where he stayed for a day and a half before returning to the Suffolk County jail. He remained in the jail’s infirmary for his entire incarceration, according to Eisenberg.
After his first 50 days, Abdalla said he finally received the jail’s guidebook.
“So I start asking questions. Before that, I was quiet because I think that is how it is,” he said. After learning about his rights from the guidebook, he said, “I was the most famous guy in jail after that because I always argued with them.”
Eisenberg didn’t want to elaborate much on Abdalla’s treatment while he was in jail, explaining he encouraged Abdalla to look toward the future rather than live in the past.
“We all have our condemnation of ICE and the Suffolk County House of Correction, and we know that there were deplorable conditions of confinement, and the most important thing is that his freedom was taken away,” Eisenberg said. “I’ve seen a lot of people freed from long periods of imprisonment and Niberd and I talked about this on the ride. I’ve seen the kind of bitterness that can overtake you and poison you, and you either celebrate your freedom, celebrate what you have that is wonderful in your life and move forward, or you just keep looking backwards at the darkness and stay there.”
Abdalla is looking forward. He joked that one day he might write a book. But sooner than that, Abdalla — who is a newlywed — hopes to visit his in-laws in California and have a proper wedding.
“And we will have a real honeymoon,” he added.
On Jan. 4, Abdalla and McShane married in a small ceremony at the jail. She wore a black and white striped top and he “a gray tuxedo.” Margaret Sawyer, a Pioneer Valley Workers Center lead organizer and United Church of Christ minister, was the officiant. McShane’s son Patrick was in attendance, as was Eisenberg.
“For the most horrible and depressing circumstances to be married in and under, Margaret made it the most meaningful and beautiful ceremony imaginable. It was lovely,” McShane said, choking up with tears. “It really meant so much. She included every member of our family by name and it turned out to be quite beautiful for such a sad circumstance.”
The pair met 38 years ago while riding horses in Central Park, fell in love and were elated when they found out McShane was pregnant. The couple’s parents disapproved of the union and that pulled them apart. Their son, Kevin McShane, is on active duty in the U.S. Navy at Naval Base Coronado near San Diego.
A decade ago Abdalla and Ellen McShane reconnected and planned to get married when he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June.
Now though, the couple is together and has already filed some of the necessary paperwork to ensure Abdalla can not only remain in the U.S. but do so legally.
Abdalla and McShane hope one day to be able to volunteer and be there for the next person. In the meantime, they are grateful for the outpouring of support the community gave them.
“There isn’t enough ways to say thank you and to say ‘keep it up’ because, frankly, he’s not the only one,” McShane said. “There are thousands of people facing this same nightmare and their force counts and what they’ve done mattered and I will be eternally grateful as I know Niberd will be.”
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.