FOX NEWS
Major Jan Mohammad Arash, Captain Noorullah Aminyar, Captain Mohammad Nasir Askarzada.
BATAVIA, N.Y. — In immigration court here Wednesday, everyone agreed that Afghan army Major Jan Arash is not a threat to national security. He had passed a polygraph test to come to the United States. Until he and two other Afghan soldiers left a conference on Cape Cod last month and tried to flee to Canada, he had never been in jail.
But immigration Judge Steven Connelly told Arash he believed he might flee again if freed and ordered him released only on a “significant” bond of $25,000, more than four times what he earns a year fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
After the judge spoke, Arash jerked in his seat and leaned forward.
“Your honor?” Arash said. “$25,000?”
Arash is the first of three Afghan Army soldiers to win bail after they were stopped on Sept. 22 at the Canadian border trying to cross to seek asylum and returned to the United States to seek asylum here instead. The bail marked a partial victory for Arash, since the federal immigration prosecutor had opposed it.
But Arash’s lawyer said the bail was “extraordinarily high” for someone with no criminal record seeking protection in the United States. According to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the national average for bond is $5,200.
“I’m glad that a bond was granted; however, we don’t have the money to post $25,000,” the men’s lawyer, Matthew Borowski, said after the hearing in Batavia immigration court, inside the same jail where the men are held. Borowski said he would try to raise the money through a website set up Wednesday. He said that he had already found Arash a place to stay in Buffalo if the bail can be raised.
Arash, 48, and Afghan Army captains Noorullah Aminyar, 30, and Mohammad Nasir Askarzada, 28, made headlines worldwide last month for disappearing during a group outing from a training at Camp Edwards. They said they fear death if forced to return to Afghanistan; they say the Taliban wants to kill them for aiding the Americans and that the Afghan government could throw them in jail.
The men are in immigration jail facing deportation for overstaying their visas, a civil offense.
Borowski said Arash had tried to explain to the judge Wednesday that he lives in a rented house with his family of five and that he could not afford the bail, especially because the Afghan government has stopped his salary. But Connelly refused to hear Arash, saying his lawyer had spoken for him. The judge scheduled Arash’s deportation hearing for Dec. 9, and said he should file an application for asylum by Nov. 10 for consideration.
Federal immigration prosecutor Marvin J. Muller III had opposed bond, saying Arash had no family ties in America and could easily flee again.
“I don’t see anything in this record to indicate that respondent is anything but a flight risk,” Muller told the judge.
But Muller conceded that Arash was not a national security threat. “I have no record of any such risk,” Muller said.
The judge also held hearings Wednesday for Askarzada and Aminyar, but continued the hearings to Oct. 22 so he and the lawyers can review documents in their cases.
Borowski has said that Arash and the other soldiers are not flight risks, since it is now clear that Canada will not accept them. Current rules require foreigners to seek asylum in the country where they first landed. The men said they slipped away from a Camp Edwards outing Sept. 20 and paid taxis more than $1,600 to take them to the border.
Aminyar, a former platoon leader who lived in the United States for 10 months in 2012, told CBC Radio in Canada this week that he did not think Canada would turn them away from the border checkpoint.
“We thought it would be really easy to go to Canada,” he said.
The men’s departure is not the first time foreign military officers and police have vanished from training in the United States.
A week before the three Afghan soldiers slipped away from Camp Edwards, two Afghan police officers left a Drug Enforcement Administration training in Virginia and were found in Buffalo, also near the Canadian border.
In 2010, military officials acknowledged that at least 17 Afghan military officers had decamped from a military language school in Texas in recent years. Media reports said most had been accounted for, though Defense officials could not provide a full accounting this week.
Last year, 13 military students vanished from US training programs, a small portion of the 77,000 invited to study here, according to the Department of State.
Federal officials could not provide details Wednesday of the 13 students’ nationalities or whereabouts.
Borowski said Arash, a father of five, and the other men are worried about their families and hope that they will be able to join them in the United States.
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