[Assam] [assam] Nobody's Child; Adopted at 3 months 30 yr-old becomes global orphan

[bhuban.baruah]

Times of India (May 24, 2012)

WASHINGTON: She's nobody's child. Orphaned at birth and losing her 
adoptive mother at eight was rough enough. But stateless at 17 after 
being disenfranchised and disowned by both her adopted country and the 
country of her birth -- how much more cruel can the world be, except of 
course to punish her with debilitating multiple sclerosis when she is 
fighting a pitiless legal system?

In a heart-breaking case that reveals the remorseless nature of 
governments, bureaucracies, and the judicial system, Kairi Abha 
Shepherd, now 30, who was adopted from Kolkata when she was only three 
months old by an American single mother from Utah, has been ordered to 
be deported to India, a country she has never lived in or visited.

Shorn of technicalities, the complicated case boils down to this: 
Kairi's mother Erlene, an American do-gooder who adopted 11 children 
 from across the world, many of them with disabilities, did not complete 
the paperwork and other formalities that would have made the India-born 
child a US citizen, before she (the single mother) died of cancer when 
the adopted child was only eight.

Still, Kairi might have navigated the system with the help of her 
siblings and her mother's friends and come out unscathed. But at 17, 
she was arrested and convicted of felony check forgery to fuel a drug 
habit. That brought her under the shadow of the Illegal Immigration 
Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that allowed 
deportations of legal permanent residents convicted of non-violent 
crimes. In 2004, Kairi was convicted on forgery charges, a crime of 
''moral turpitude'' that was covered under the 1996 Act for deportation 
even after she served a prison sentence.

Soon the bureaucracy, procedures, and technicalities took over. Kairi's 
lawyers produced a birth certificate, legal adoption papers, and 
documentation to show that she qualified for citizenship under the 
Child Citizenship Act of 2000 and won favourable rulings from an 
immigration judge. But government prosecutors returned to show that she 
missed qualifying for the Child Citizenship Act by a few months and 
appealed the immigration judge's ruling.

Earlier this month, Judge Scott Matheson of the 10th circuit court, in 
a 23-page decision, wrote the court simply didn't have jurisdiction 
over determining Shepherd's legal status, a ruling that virtually 
upheld the federal government's right to remove her from the country.

''She just fell between the cracks,'' Kairi's attorney Alan Smith, who 
is working pro-bono on the case, told TOI in an interview. ''In my 30 
years of legal practice, I have never seen anything like this.''

Smith and a group of lawyers who have volunteered to represent Kairi 
are now conferring about appealing to the US Supreme Court in the 
45-day window before US immigration officials begin deportation 
proceedings. Not that either process will be easy.

Immigration authorities must first determine whether the country of 
origin will admit the person being returned, and there is no word from 
New Delhi yet on that. Besides, Smith and his team are also petitioning 
authorities to hold her removal in abeyance in light of her medical 
condition.

''We want authorities to hold back deportation proceedings till we 
exhaust all legal avenues." Smith said. ''Our biggest fear is that she 
might find it hard to survive in India with her multiple sclerosis 
condition with no support.''

Currently incommunicado fearing imminent deportation, Kairi is in touch 
with her attorneys over phone and email. She's a global orphan.