Despite intervention from Congress, Amer Adi Othman remains in a federal prison about three miles from his downtown grocery store and hookah bar in Youngstown. That’s where his wife, daughters, friends, customers and other supporters gathered to argue in the letters they wrote what hundreds of protesters had argued in the streets over the weekend: That the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement cannot justify holding him.
Adi and his wife had sold their home and purchased one-way tickets to Jordan when ICE said two weeks ago it would re-review the case. Instead, he was arrested last Tuesday at what was to have been an ICE check-in.
One of his four daughters, Lina, said her father had no inkling what was coming and has received no explanation since.
“If you can’t explain why, then you shouldn’t be doing it If you have no reasoning behind it, then you should probably just let him go. Or let him go back home. He was on his way. There was no point to this, not reason to it," she said.
At the urging of U.S. Congressman Tim Ryan (D -13th), a House subcommittee last week added its voice by asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to review the case. The family had expected Adi’s release Friday, but instead he was transferred from a county jail to the federal prison.